


Trapped

by Gem_Gem, harrylee94



Series: Bonded by Words Stories [3]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, BAMF John, Demon John, I'm Bad At Tagging, M/M, Might be added to in the future, Mild Gore, Mild Homophobic Language, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Sherlock Holmes, a Bond, kiss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-01
Updated: 2017-11-28
Packaged: 2019-01-27 17:17:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 41,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12586796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gem_Gem/pseuds/Gem_Gem, https://archiveofourown.org/users/harrylee94/pseuds/harrylee94
Summary: During his most recent case, Sherlock finds himself in the hands of the very people he had been trying to pursue. This mistake lands him in a cell, already occupied by a strange man who calls himself John.But who is John? And why does he look so... hungry?--The Bonded by Words Stories are co-written stories by Gem and Harry.Bonded by words forever.The only link these stories have is that they were written by us both and are of the Sherlock Fandom.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> We wanted something to post for Halloween and were actually writing something but it wasn't finished in time, so instead we decided to post a part of a story we've written a while ago in 2016.
> 
> It's also late, because of the (rough) editing, but it's better than nothing...right?
> 
> Let us know if you want to know more with this story, want more chapters posted, and if there are any tags we need to add.
> 
> Enjoy!

Sherlock could barely concentrate on the bends and turns and long, seeming endless corridors, as the bump on his head throbbed, spilling blood down his face, into his eyes, making it harder and harder for him to see and think and remember. He felt dizzy and sick, and his limbs wouldn’t obey him. He had a concussion, a strained wrist, bruised ribs, and a split lip, and he was being half carried and half dragged down into the depths of a stone building. Although he attempted to kick out, to dig his heels in, and try to stop the march forward, he was unable to do so, only fumbling and twisting his ankles whenever he tried.

He wasn’t sure where he was being taken, but he did know that he wasn’t supposed to come back from it. He was being taken to his death, but where that was and what that was, Sherlock wasn’t sure. They had weapons, guns and small knives, yet they were barely used. Just for show.

There was a sudden moment of stillness, those holding him coming to a stop, and Sherlock blearily lifted his head enough to see a barred door and a dark shadow on the other side. The bars seemed to be glowing and eerily deep red. It was a rhythmic throbbing, rippling glow, and he frowned, confused, and distracted from his need to get away for a moment as he stared at them.

His vision was blurred and unfocused, the blood in his eyes and the radiating pain from the knock on his head, leaving his eyesight hazy and frustrating. He was brought closer to the door as one of the men holding him reached out with something, and Sherlock swayed heavily forward, swiftly almost nose-to-nose with the door. It wasn’t exactly the bars that were glowing, as he had first thought, but what was on them. Blearily Sherlock tried to focus, blinking blood and tears from his eyes, but there was a loud, echoing click of a lock being opened, and he instead glanced aside and watched as the door was opened.

It felt like all time had slowed to a snails pace as the thick, barred door was pushed inwards, and he peered into the gloomy room on the other side with a thundering heart and a befuddled mind, taken aback by the wave of reddish glow that seemed to encompass the entire space. Whatever was on the door, was also in the room, smeared up the walls, across the ceiling, and into the floor. What was it? Where was he? Why had they brought him here?

Sherlock could only give the dark, blurry figure crouched in the corner a brief, interested squint, before he was abruptly thrust into the room by rough hands, landing on his chest and knocking his chin, too slow to catch himself when he had fallen. He grunted and shook, head pounding even more, and jerked as his legs were booted the last few inches inside so the door could shut behind him with an almighty bang. The two men laughed, saying something that Sherlock didn’t quite catch over the ringing in his ears, and then left him there, walking back the way they had come.

Slowly, very frustratingly slowly, Sherlock tried to compose himself and focused on moving first his arms, and then his legs, pushing up awkwardly to sit against one of the walls. It seemed to thrum, sending the hairs at his nape on end, and he frowned, reaching to stroke and touch where the wall met the floor. Everything thrummed as if there was an electrical current surging through it all and Sherlock reached to clumsily wipe his face, to clear his vision, and blinked rapidly, looking around him.

The room itself was bare, even the walls were only the basic cinderblock foundations. There were no windows, but every surface throbbed that deep ruby, rippling across the room almost like some sort of wave. A metal door on the floor, just next to where he was siting, was perhaps a meter squared, and it almost glowed. There were only two spots that held any hint of reprieve; a small pile of clothes, folded neatly in a corner, and the figure Sherlock had noticed when he’d first entered.

It was a man – a fairly short one, if his crouched figure was anything to go by – and he was wearing what looked to be regulation army kakis and shirt, but his feet were bare. There were deep, dark bags under his eyes, and a scruff of beard on his chin. However, what was most startling was the smile he was directing at Sherlock. It was heartless yet humorous, empty yet longing, unhappy yet… hungry.

“I was wondering when they’d send someone new,” the man said, drawing himself up straight (he was short, or several inches shorter than Sherlock at any rate), but frowned. “Always damaged though.” The man sighed and approached.

Sherlock watched him and shuffled, pressing a little further into the wall behind him, sitting up straight, “Someone new,” he parroted, wincing when his head crackled with pain. He touched the bump with trembling fingers, feeling the break in the skin of his scalp, and then looked at the blood on his fingertips, rubbing them together. The abrasion thankfully wasn’t deep, but the blood was annoying, as was the spinning headache.

He glanced back at the barred door briefly, listening for the faint echoes of the men still walking away, and then fixed his sole attention on the man inside the room with him, maddened that he was unable to properly focus on him enough to pick up any clues to who he was, though the facial hair told him it had been a long time since he’d be able to use a razor.

The man had tilted his head to the side, watching him in fascination, before coming to kneel next to Sherlock. Without a word, he grabbed hold of Sherlock’s head and moved it forwards, surprisingly careful as he examined the wound. “Honestly, they have no idea how damaging the host distorts the flavour,” the man said, as though he were talking about a child who had eaten too many sweets. He touched at the cut, then licked his thumb and rubbed it over the abrasion.

Hissing, Sherlock flinched aside and then frowned deeply, staring into the man’s face, “What?” he asked, clenching his jaw when the room span from the sharp movement. Sherlock waved the man back and shifted to move away from him. “Who are you? Why have they kept you here so long? Why put me in here with you?” He glanced at the glowing walls, floor and door. “What is this?” He winced and fought down a small bout of nausea, and then tried to crawl to the door, pulling himself up sluggishly and gripping hold of the bars.

The stranger smirked, amused, “So many questions,” he said. “It’s always the same; ‘who are you? Why am I here? What’s going to happen to me?’…” He shrugged and leant back against the wall, focusing on his thumb and fingers as he smeared Sherlock’s blood across them. “You can call me John, if you’d like. As for why you’re here…” He stopped and looked up at Sherlock again, licking the blood off his thumb.

Sherlock adjusted his stance, blinking in confusion, and then scoffed and turned to peer outside, “Fine ‘John.’” he murmured, peering closely at the weird glowing markings on the bars under his hands, narrowing his eyes on them in growing fascination.

The markings were strange symbols and they weren’t lights, they weren’t etched into the door, they didn’t even seem to be drawn or painted on, they were just there. Sherlock rubbed at his eyes, tried to concentration, tried to focus, and reached one arm through the gap in the bars, bending it and straining to find the lock, hoping he could reach it. There didn’t seem to be anyone around guarding the place. In fact, it seemed to just be a tunnel of long hallways reaching out from either side and in front of him.

“You won’t be able to get out that way,” ‘John’ told him, his tone bored as he leaned his head back, closing his eyes. “They’ve all tried.”

“Did they indeed,” Sherlock retorted sharply, annoyed at the man as his fingertips found the lock. He tilted his head, concentrating, and felt awkwardly around it, recalling what the key looked like and then pulling his hand back in. “Too bad for them.”

“Oh yes,” came the reply, and John moved to stand behind him. He leaned in close into Sherlock without actually touching him and inhaled deeply through his nose. “Interesting,” he hummed.

Sherlock felt all the hair on his neck and arms prickle, and turned to glance over his shoulder at him, arching his eyebrow, “Do you answer any of them?” he said, slipping aside away from the man and then making his way over to the odd metal door in the floor. “The questions everyone seems to ask. Do you answer any?” Kneeling, Sherlock ran his fingertips over it, knocking and picking at it, testing the metal and the hinges idly.

“Do you, detective?” John replied.

“Not exactly a detective,” Sherlock answered after a moments pause. He narrowed his eyes on the man and stood again, glaring. “Who are you, ‘John?’” He gestured at the clothes he wore. “This isn’t you. It could very well be. But it’s not. These aren’t your clothes. None of these are. – You’re not a solider. You don’t move like one. Stand like one. Talk like one. Not anymore” He gave the room a brief glance, looking at the folded clothes, and then looked back. “Who are you?”

John grinned at him, “Very good. _Very_ good,” he mused. “People don’t see things like that. But then, you’re not people, are you, detective?” He turned around, looking up at the ceiling again. “All that information, all that knowledge, and no one to share it with.”

“You’re supposed to kill me,” Sherlock stated in an emotionless drawl, his hair still standing up as the air fizzed between them. He’d said the words before he’d properly thought about them. Before he’d assessed and gone over them. “Like the others. And I assume you dump their bodies out of this conveniently placed door once you’re done – What are you their pet?” He snorted and then curled his lip. “What do you get out of it? Apart from amusement, it seems.”

John stiffened, “Be careful what you say, or my ‘amusement’ will wear thin.”

“Hit a nerve, did I?” Sherlock asked mockingly and moved back to stand with his back to the wall, motioning with a sweep of his arm. “It’s obvious. It’s the reality. What else are you but their pet? – Do they make you beg? Do you do tricks? If you’re a good boy, do they let you out for a run in the garden?”

Suddenly, Sherlock was being held against the wall, a hand curled around his throat as his feet dangled several inches above the ground. There was a fire in John’s eyes – a cold flame that consumed all the warmth and humour that had once lingered there – and his lip was pulled back in a sneer. “I am no one’s pet,” he hissed. “They are afraid of me, these ants. Pitiful creatures who hide behind their witchcraft and blood magic. Disgusting, cowardly amoebas.”

Sherlock struggled, thrashing his legs and gripping at the hand that crushed his windpipe in a tightening grasp, he tried to swallow, to breathe, but it was difficult and painful, and Sherlock kept kicking out. “J-John…” he rasped in a choking gurgle, clawing and then tugging at the strong, rigid, flexing fingers at his neck. He tried to speak again but found he was unable, and could only let out a hitched and strained sound of distress.

John’s fingers twitched, and Sherlock fell to the floor in a heap, gasping and coughing as he tried to fill his lungs once again, “You are lucky I’m as hungry for company as I am,” John growled, looking dispassionately down at him.

Once he’d scrambled away from John and gotten his breathing back under control, Sherlock touched his painful throat, feeling his heart racing under his fingers and echoing in agonising thumps at his temples, “You are doing their bidding,” Sherlock said lowly, swallowing and stifling the wince that followed. “Killing people. Killing me. They want you to do that, and you do. Why do it? What do they have over you?” He pushed further back from John, pressing into the corner of the room. “They’re deluded idiots. I agree. Believing in the illogical and blindly following inbred leaders. So how have they got such control over you? Why let them? Why not use that muscle of yours to get out? – You could have grabbed them when they threw me in here. They were right at the door. You heard them coming with me. You knew why they were bringing me here. Knew how many of them there would be. If they’ve done it more than once, which they obviously have, then you must know their routine.”

“Routine,” John snorted. “They feed me when it suits them. I haven’t heard anyone for too long.” One of his hands rose to run through his hair and over his face. “It’s always too long,” he muttered. “I can barely remember what it was like not to have this constant-” He hit the wall with the side of his fist, and the marks flared bright around the impact, rippling out in a wave until it became even once again. “What does food taste like? Does water truly quench thirst?” The fist becoming a caressing finger along the undamaged cinderblocks.

Sherlock blinked widely at the walls and then frowned at him, before taking a moment to look at the bare room once again, “That…doesn’t make sense,” he said. “You said that they ‘feed you when it suits them,’ yet you question the taste of food and wonder about water—And this room, why is it like this?” He touched the symbols, thumping the wall himself after a second, confused further when he didn’t receive the same rippling effect. Sherlock tried again, and then again, before he pushed up gradually to his feet, feeling just a little unnerved at the look of the pulsing, red, tattooed surfaces.

John remained silent for several moments, his hand going still against the wall, “You hear, but do not listen, detective,” he replied. “What happens when you cage a wild beast? How do you contain it when the wooden box splinters?” He caressed several symbols. “How do you get rid of nasty annoyances while keeping your own hands clean?”

“The last, I understand. Many people do the same. Pay hired guns, blackmail or even coerce someone into doing the deed, so nothing can be pinned on them. That’s all fine. Them leaving someone else to ‘get rid’ of trouble, makes some sort of sense, but what you’re implying in the former, does not –You can’t be serious?” Sherlock muttered after a second or two, eyes flitting from the symbols to John’s face and back again. He gave a humourless, short, rasping laugh. “You expect me to believe that? Truly? You expect me to believe that this room, these markings, are what’s keeping you in here?—Rubbish! That’s not logical. These…symbols are meaningless!”

“Do you expect me to have remained silent in this cell?” John demanded, turning to face him. “Had it just been metal and stone I could have escaped long ago – before the first of those pests was thrown into my prison. They were even kind enough to give me easy access once they transferred me here.” He walked over to the metal hatch and pulled it open, revealing a deep, black tunnel. “Do you think I would not have gone if I could have?” With that, he took a step out onto open air and… much as what had happened with the wall, the air beneath his foot flared bright red in scribbled runes, burning brilliantly under his bare feet as he stood there, glaring at Sherlock. “These symbols have meaning, detective. These symbols are my death sentence.”

Sherlock stared at him, lost for words, but then shook himself and walked over, reaching out with his foot to step in the same place, only he was thrown off balance when it went straight through the glowing symbols, tipping him forward. He caught himself on John’s shoulders and then yanked his hands back as if burnt, taking several uneven, shaky steps backward.

That wasn’t possible. It was a trick. A good one, but one nonetheless. It had to be. Sherlock swallowed and raked his brain, trying to explain what he was seeing, explain what the symbols did under John’s feet, at his touch, but came up blank. He shook his head, turning his back on John and the opened hatch, and gripped his curls. Nothing made sense, it was all nonsense, and it was making his entire scalp sputter with pain as he tried to think, tried to reason.

There was the sound of footsteps, and then a deep breath, “You smell of fear, detective,” John drawled. “And I had such high hopes…”

With a jerk, Sherlock stumbled around and away from John, “How far is the drop?” he found himself mumbling, each word intoned without emotion, while he tried to ignore what had happened, to forget parts of it until later. There wasn’t time to dawdle and obsess and panic.

One of John’s brows rose, obviously impressed, “It takes a body about a second to drop, so about ten meters.”

Sherlock moved back to the open hatch and peered down, eyeing the surrounding walls, “It would have been nice if you’d have told me earlier that you could just open this thing,” he said and kneeled, leaning very slowly over to try and look down.

“And have you leave without even a taste?” John asked, circling round and pushing the hatch so it teetered then fell back over the hole with its own weight. He pulled Sherlock well clear before he was hit with an air of mischief. “You smell delectable, detective. Why would I let you go?”

Stopping himself from retorting with another burst of questions, Sherlock let his heart calm from its racing beat and then looked at John, “Because, John, I can get you out,” he told him and shot him a short, quick smile.

“No,” John replied with his own smile. “You will leave and go back to your mundane life and leave me to rot.” He quirked an eyebrow, daring Sherlock to counter him.

“I’m offended you think my life is mundane,” Sherlock scoffed and then lifted his chin, taking a breath and shrugging loosely. “Earlier you said I was lucky you were hungry for company.” He shot John a smug expression. “I say it’s you who’s lucky. Lucky someone such as I has been thrust in your direction – It’s doubtful you’ll be given another person like me, John. You said it yourself, I’m not people. I’m different.” He stepped back and spread his arms arrogantly. “Kill me and you remain trapped in here. Probably never to be free. Never given the chance to be free. Or you let me go-- There is an extremely high chance I might actually do as I say and free you. Of course, yes, I also might not. But isn’t the chance worth it? Has anyone else given you such a chance? They might have pleaded with you and tried to bargain, but their words were empty.”

“And yours aren’t?” John retorted with a scoff. “How am I supposed to trust someone with my life when they won’t even tell me their name?”

“Right back at you,” Sherlock huffed. “You haven’t given me your real name. ‘John’ is not it. It’s something else. Yet you keep it from me. Yet you fail to answer questions I put to you. – You’re just as untrustworthy. You might even kill me the moment I free you if I chose to do so, there would be nothing to stop you.” He narrowed his eyes. “And my words are not empty. I know more than anyone else before me whom came here knew.” Sherlock lifted his eyebrows and grinned. “I know where their ‘main archive’ is. Where they keep all their information. All their books and scrolls and ritualistic tools and ingredients, and whatever else their stupid, sad little minds thought they needed for their pathetic cult. I was there when they caught me.”

John’s brow rose in surprise, and he leaned back, considering. After several long seconds, he nodded, “I won’t insult your intelligence by giving you answers you already know,” he said, folding his arms. “My name is John, or Ioan, originally. I prefer John. I asked what food tasted like, and if water quenched thirst, because I have not eaten or drank since before I was imprisoned. And I am here because I fed off of their daughter’s… well, I suppose you would call it a soul.”

“…You are the ‘Sucker of Souls?’” Sherlock blinked, frowned, started to feel a build up of whirling endless questions, and quickly shook his head, changing the subject. “Sherlock. And I’m a consulting detective. The one and only.”

“’The’,” John said with a smirk. “Did they paint me as a monster in those books and scrolls of theirs, Sherlock?”

Hearing his name from John’s lips had the odd effect of sending tingles and shivers down his spine, a mixed signal of apprehension and honour, “There are illustrations of you, and yes, you were made out to be a monster. I certainly don’t recall you looking so…normal in their depictions and descriptions of you.” Sherlock thought back, still finding it a tad difficult to fully concentrate due to the bump to his head, and then moved his eyes to the symbols on the walls. “I think something akin to this… language, if that’s what it is, was all over one of the books if I recall. But it was different. I don’t remember seeing these markings…”

John snorted, “Then these people are paranoid beyond reason. As though I could even leave this place to look at their writings. As though I would even want to.” He languidly looked over at the door. “Though I suppose knowing how they keep me here would prevent further… mistakes.”

“They obviously did their homework on you,” Sherlock said, trying to think back and remember anything else. What had he seen in that room? So much of it had passed his eyes without spiking his curiosity. His memories were slightly foggy from disinterest and the blow to his head, and he let out an annoyed sigh. “If I free you. What will you do and where exactly will you go?”

John licked his lips, “I doubt I will be able to return to my former life,” he said, “but it has been so very long since I feasted, and I have a debt to settle with my hosts. As for after that…” He tilted his head to the side. “I wonder if medicine has changed much since I was hidden away.”

Sherlock snorted softly with a squint at John’s face, “After killing innocent people you want to go into medicine? - Interesting.” He looked back over at the hatch and then motioned toward it. “Will you let me go then? Or at least try. I assume it leads somewhere but it could very well just be a pit. You didn’t really give me a chance to look. If it is, then…I have a second plan I could try…”

"Perhaps," John replied, slithering forwards to lean into Sherlock's personal space. " _If_ you let me taste."

“You can ‘taste’ and ‘feed’ once we leave. There are at least ten of them to choose from,” Sherlock told him, motioning to the barred door and those beyond who’d imprisoned John and thrust Sherlock in with him.

John hummed and pressed closer, tracing his finger over Sherlock’s chest, their mouths inches apart, "But they wouldn't taste _nearly_ as beautiful as you."

Sherlock glanced down briefly, “What makes me so different?” he asked lowly, curious despite the sudden thundering of his heart and shoot of adrenaline.

John leaned closer, and moved his head so his nose brushed the spot just below Sherlock's ear. He breathed slowly, fingertips circling over Sherlock’s heart, "The experiences of a man flavours their 'soul'. They are empty, dull, boring. You... You are a feast."

Swallowing thickly, Sherlock took a shaky but quiet breath, trying to control the raising panic, and stepped aside and back, “Thank you,” he mumbled with arrogance and confidence he didn’t feel. “But I’m a feast you can’t partake in. – I’m sure even tasting my ‘soul’ isn’t particularly good for me. I need every bit of it I’d imagine…” He nodded to the hatch. “So, if you wouldn’t mind focusing on the job at hand instead of your… hunger, that would be great.”

John huffed, his arm falling back to his side, "Bruised fruit don't taste sweet enough anyway," he dismissed, folding his arms behind his back. A curious look flickered across his face as he looked Sherlock up and down. "Why would you help me? You don't 'help' people Sherlock. You solve them." He grinned. "Or am I truly too much of a mystery for you to leave unsolved?"

“I won’t insult your intelligence by giving you answers you already know,” Sherlock told him, returning the grin. “Now, the hatch, if you please.”

John considered him for several long moments, raking his eyes over every inch of his body, before lowering himself into a crouch and pulling the thick metal flap from the floor. Sherlock went back over, edging close and bending to look down, trying to see through the gloom. He could just about see the bottom, or what he thought was the bottom, and he sighed, glancing back at the barred door, before sitting at the edge and searching for footholds with both his eyes and his feet. Giving John a fleeting glance from under his blood-sticky fringe, Sherlock slowly began to descend, hoping that if it was merely just a pit, that he could climb back up and out again.

"They don't clean up after me, by the way," John warned. "It could get a mite sticky for you."

“I’ve seen and been in worse, trust me,” Sherlock told him as he ignored the pounding in his head and the straining of his muscles. The bruises at his ribs and his wrist flared with pain at each movement, but it was better than the alternative. “Leave the hatch open.”

"Like I was going to shut you out," John replied, and leaned on the air, bringing a dark glow to the walls of the pit.

“Hm. Can’t let your feast go to waste, I suppose,” Sherlock mumbled under his breath as he carefully and gradually made it down to the bottom.

There was a heap of foul smelling lumps of rotting flesh and organs, as well as a large collection of piled bones, some of them broken and sharp. Sherlock wrinkled his nose at the smell, though it could have been a lot worse. He was lucky there had been a long period between him and the last victim. Sherlock looked back up at the red, ominous, rippling glow and John’s dark leaning figure, and then turned his attention around him, keeping to the sides as he felt around for a way out.

The room was as dark as the tunnel had been, and had it not been for the red glow, Sherlock had no doubt that he wouldn't have been able to see his hand in front of his face. There was, however, a faint glow that crept from under what must have been a door. When he reached it, he was pleasantly surprised to find that it was wooden, though it was still locked.

Sherlock brushed his fingertips over the door handle and then the keyhole, before pushing his hand down below to the slimy, drenched wood, coated and saturated with bodily fluids, new and old. He gave it a shove, testing the strength of it, and followed it to the centre, and then the other side, checking the hinges, happy when it seemed as if the door opened outwards instead of inwards.

Feeling out the rest of the door, memorising it’s shape, Sherlock gave it a few extra shoves and then shuffled back a few steps, disrupting and moving the mound of bones, cloth and rotting flesh behind him. He took a deep breath visualising the door in front of him, whilst both trying to see through the darkness, and lifted his right leg, driving the heel of his foot beside where the lock was mounted. The sound was loud and the door vibrated and creaked, and after letting his sudden headache die down Sherlock kicked again, and then again, putting more and more effort into it until it finally splintered roughly and broke out with a shower of wood.

“I’ll be waiting, Sherlock,” John called down to him from above, and the red glow vanished.

Now he had the light in the hall to accompany him though, and though it was still dim, it was enough to see the aged brick of the walls, a mould clinging to the walls in long, dripping lines from water-caused cracks, a brighter light at the end of the corridor from around a corner. He stepped forward, shoes scraping against grit and fallen plaster, tracing long forgotten footprints in the dust and disturbing spiders from their nests. The air was dank, and the aftertaste of rot permeated the air, along with a faint dripping from an unseen source.

With one last glance over his shoulder, Sherlock moved forward, following the light, ignoring the line of doors from seemingly other pits attached to many other cells, and squinting with a wince when he got closer. It was coming from another door, or rather the wall beside it, which had been damaged it seemed by a fallen tree. Sherlock crouched and looked through, checking the sky first for the time, before he got down on his hands and knees, and then his stomach, and squeezed himself through the makeshift hole.

It was cold outside, almost bitterly so, and the wind clawed at the wound on his head in relentless, stinging cascades. Sherlock rubbed at his arms slightly, missing his coat, and then looked over the building, making his way slowly, silently, along the wall towards the front, the way he’d come in.

It was an old building – Victorian at least – with great walls of red brick and decorated window and door ledges. Ivy was running up along the drainpipe on the right hand side of the front door, an ostentatious thing painted black with a brass knocker and handle, overshadowed by a still standing horse-chestnut, leaves in the final stages of autumn. There was a light cast onto the grass from a building high up in the building, but other than that, Sherlock couldn’t see any other sign of life.

Flexing his fingers to warm them, Sherlock peered up at the light and then turned his back on the building, facing freedom. He could just leave, get to a payphone and call Lestrade, have the place swarming with police in a matter of minutes.

Thinking of John, of the red symbols, of the scrolls and the books and the diagrams and candles and sacrificial tools, Sherlock looked back and sighed a cloud of white breath. It was irrational to go back. It was idiotic. It was dangerous and crazy. With a determined set of his jaw, Sherlock pushed aside the raising panic again, locking away all the unanswered questions, all the illogical things he’d seen, and walked across to the front door.

He very quietly, very subtly, tried the handle, keeping an eye on the light from above and an ear out for any sound. The handle turned, and Sherlock found himself surprised by the sheer stupidity of the morons who owned the building, as the door clicked open with ease. Even the hinges were well oiled, so he made barely a sound as he stepped inside, though his shoes did make a slight tap on the tiled floor.

The entrance was grand; an open hall with a grand stairway at the far end, with doors leading off into several direction. A balconied walkway bordered the room from above, and windows let in some light from the outside, filtering down through cobwebs and dust. It was a decrepit place, cold and forgotten, save for the lone artificial light that lit the hallway above.

Sherlock gave it a passing glance and shut the front door behind him soundlessly, leaning against it as he inhaled and composed his thoughts. He’d already been through almost every door on his level earlier and there had only been a few rooms that had been interesting, one of which was the room he needed to revisit. The archive room. He turned his gaze to it, hoping that the idiotic tendencies from the mass of stupid upstairs meant that other doors had also been left unlocked, and made toward it, careful with the pressure of his footsteps as he moved.

A loose tile clinked underfoot as he stepped on it, but it was quiet enough not to cause any alarm, and he was soon by the door. He’d seen it before, but now he’d been in that cell, Sherlock recognised the chicken-scratch etched into the wood for something more. When the door opened to his hand, he decided that it must have been a lock to keep John out, and nothing else, though that didn’t mean that the archive room itself would be so blatantly unguarded.

The first thing that caught his eye was the key to John’s cell, and he reached for it, taking it down from it’s hook, rolling it between his fingers, and pocketing it in his trousers. He moved on to what he’d disturbed prior, what he’d looked through and shifted, finding that it had been more or less returned to where he’d taken them from. He calmly shifted them again, looking through pages in a book, paying more attention to the symbols, the markings, and the illustrations that he saw, and than went on to the rest of the documentation, searching through drawers and folders.

It didn’t take him too long to find what he was looking for. In fact, it was almost on display, sitting in one of the dust-ridden shelves yet one of the few things that was clean. It wasn’t a terribly old book, and someone had conveniently left several pages of notes within the pages, translating the scribbles into English. It was the last page that caught his notice though, titled ‘Containing the Soul-Sucker’. Sherlock wondered if they were as imaginative in their ‘spells’ as they were their names.

He gave it a once over, finding the symbols, the language, both annoying and fascinating. It seemed almost like a lost language because it was nothing he’d ever seen or heard of before, which was the main reason he had previously thought it was all senseless nonsense and pushed it aside. Sherlock thought of John again, of the glowing marks under his bare feet, and skimmed through the translations, matching them up to the symbols with gaining interest.

It reminded him a little of Japanese from the way in which it was written – top to bottom, right to left – and a little of Arabic from the way the letters were drawn, but the guttural way in which it was spoken seemed almost Celtic. There seemed to be the expected sacrifice of blood for the ‘curse’ to work or be broken, plus the drawing of a particular symbol, but the incantation itself, once translated, was incredibly simple.

Putting the book under his arm, Sherlock turned his eyes to the other books as he reached for one of the blades, able to already roughly translate some of the scrolls and passages himself with a grin. Part of him wanted to destroy everything, to let everything turn to ash. There were matches for candles near his elbow, sitting innocently just a few inches away. It could be easy to start a small fire, to distract them with it, allowing Sherlock the freedom to get to and free John without much worry.

One thing stopped him, however. John didn’t know what was used against him. Did that mean he didn’t know about anything else? Twirling the blade in his hand, Sherlock left the matches where they were and moved back out of the room, peering up at the light above and allowing his grin to grow for just a moment, until he realised that all of them would be slaughtered on John’s escape. Every single one would meet the same fate as he almost did. He took a moment, staring up at where they were, thinking of them, recalling some of their faces, of their ages, and then tilted his head at the memory of the folded clothes in John’s cell, of the pit and the heap of bodies, and let his focus narrow and his lips quirk once more. Too bad for them.

He couldn’t quite remember where John’s cell was, but he recalled being led upstairs after they had caught him, and that initial left turn, away from the lit hallway. As for which passage it was, was trial and error.

Standing for a long few moments, Sherlock tried to piece together what had happened to him, tried to clear more of the fuzzy memories from after he’d been struck in the head, but found he didn’t have that kind of time to waste and was unable to do more than grimace from the painful recollection of the impact. Taking the stairs stealthily, Sherlock kept a firm grip on both the blade and the book, and kept his wits about him as he ascended.

As expected, several of the stairs creaked, and he paused each time to listen for any approaching footsteps or voices, but the most he heard was a particularly loud coughing fit that travelled through at least two doors. Once he was on the landing, he gave the doors to the right a wary look, then moved to find John.

Listening carefully, the first door didn’t reveal a sound, but once opened displayed a large office, filing cabinets along every wall and the desk crowded with paper. The second door led to a plush hallway that ended in a bedroom, though it was little more than a room with a bed in it. The third door garnered him some luck, and the hallway beyond it led to a dark corner, which only led on to further corridors and doorways.

Sherlock stepped in, closed the door behind him, and made his way down, listening out for anything that would clue him in on John’s whereabouts. An echo of a noise. Something. Anything. When he a good distance away the door he’d entered, Sherlock fell into a light jog, which only turned into a sprint when he noticed the faint scraps where the toe of his shoes had dragged along the floor. It ended, of course, and Sherlock looked around him at the possible ways to go, trying to remember, trying to recall how many turns he’d taken, and when and where he’d lifted his feet, only to struggle again.

“Do you need help, detective?” John’s voice echoed from the left, sending Sherlock spinning towards it.

Sherlock almost retorted curtly in reply but bit down on his tongue, rolled his eyes, and made toward him, happy that the echoes continued to ripple for quite a while, “You can close the hatch now,” he told John, listening out for him as he came to another divide.

“You don’t say,” came the retort, and then a loud slam as the metal plate slammed against the ground.

The sound lasted long enough for Sherlock to find the cell and he slowed his approach, hiding the book and the blade behind his back as he stepped up to the barred door, looking in at John, “So,” he started with a sigh, “it’s official. They’re all idiots. – Well, they’ve grown cocky and therefore lazy and stupid, I should say. With you under their thumb, they think they have nothing to fear. Apparently they have no use for locks.”

“They have no use for a lot of things,” John replied. “Their brains being one of them.” He stepped closer to the door, looking Sherlock in the eye through the glow of the door. “I was half expecting you to leave me here.”

“I almost did,” Sherlock shrugged in admittance, retaining eye contact.

“That’s because you are not an idiot.” John pressed hand against the door, making it glow. “You can still leave. You haven’t got any obligation to free me. You know what I’ll do if you let me go.”

Sherlock inclined his head and then let the silence stretch out before lifting his eyebrows meaningfully, “Hm. I do know what you’ll do. Which begs the question, why am I here?”

“Why indeed,” John said as he stepped away. “Are you curious, Sherlock? Do you want to see how I do it? What happens to those people I consume?”

“Yes,” Sherlock answered and then lifted the book, making sure John only saw the spine, “and I found this – Nice little thing, this book. Says a lot about you. About how to contain you…how to enslave you…” He let the corner of his mouth turn up. “And how to release you, of course.”

“Choices, choices,” John said with a smirk, tapping a finger against his chin.

“Mm. For me. I could let you out, in fact, I think I will,” Sherlock told him, “but – and here’s the dilemma – you did express your fondness to…feast on me, which I’d rather you didn’t, and so to stop that from happening, I need to do two things, instead of just one.”

“Spoil sport,” John pouted at him, but then stepped forwards again. “Sounds permanent. Do you think you could stand living with someone like me?”

“Yes,” Sherlock replied before he’d fully thought about it, and swallowed, lowering the book awkwardly. “I meet an awful lot of people I’d not mind you…feasting on.”

John hummed, “A cage for a cage,” he mused, “though yours sounds much more comfortable sounding than this one.” The almost playful smile vanished for a moment as he looked down at the pile of clothes, but returned full swing when he returned his attention to Sherlock. “I accept.”

“Good,” Sherlock said and stared in at John for a minute or two more, before he clutched the book under his arm, took the blade, and sliced open his hand, smearing his palm onto the wall beside the cell door. Holding back the wince and cry of pain, Sherlock then drew a symbol in his own blood above it. “This won’t take but a moment.”

John remained silent, but watched in rapt fascination as Sherlock smeared his blood in the symbol depicted in the book. Holding the blade in his bloodied hand, Sherlock opened the book one-handed, balancing it on his arm and against his body as he flicked to the correct page, making sure John couldn’t see what was written there.

“Stand back a bit,” he ordered, flicking his eyes over both word and symbol alike and drawing another symbol beside the first.

Rolling his eyes, John stepped back so that he was stood in the middle of the room and crossed his arms, “Far enough?”

“Brilliant,” Sherlock replied with a quick grin. “Thank you.” He looked back down at the book, once again pushed back the panic and the thousands upon thousands of questions and thoughts on the illogicalness of the situation, and took a breath, hoping what he was about to do worked. “Ready?”

John simply raised a brow at him, clearly annoyed at the stalling, and Sherlock glared, “I am unsure if this will work and work well. It could very well just kill you.”

“It could also fair spectacularly and you would end up as _my_ slave instead,” John retorted. “I am prepared, Sherlock.”

“Fine.” He adjusted his grip on the blood-coated blade and cleared his voice, beginning to recite the words before him unhurriedly; happy he did not need to do anything else but stand and read. His sliced palm throbbed in time with his headache and heartbeat.

As he spoke, John grew steadily more and more tense, his hands falling loose to his sides as his gaze grew distant and his breath shallow. As Sherlock finished the words, John groaned, and he clutched at his shirt over his chest. From beneath his palm, a familiar red glow bloomed, and as he fell to his knees, it spread, every inch of skin becoming a cobweb of glowing veins. Even his eyes and mouth seemed to shine that ominous light as he moaned.

Sherlock hissed as a shark pain etched itself over his own heart, but it soon faded, along with the glowing from within John’s body, though he shook slightly as sweat dripped from his brow. Sherlock waited for a few moments, breathing a little shallow himself, and then turned his attention on the other incantation, surprised into silence a second when the symbols on the pages were somehow shimmering and rippling, burning into his eyes, into his mind. He took a shaky breath, adjusted his stance, and then blinked, shaking his head before beginning on the other recitation, feeling the floor rumble and the walls crumble slightly.

Lost in his own world, John knelt in the midst of an snowfall of stone splinters, the cinderblocks and metal of the door and bars flaking, sending chips flying into the air as the runes fractured and shattered into nothingness, plunging the world into almost complete darkness.

Once he had uttered the last word, Sherlock tucked the book under his arm again and took out the key, opening the door with a loud scraping click, “John?” he whispered, feeling and sounding out of breath as his body thrummed and his head span.

With a brush of air, John was stood before him, staring up into his eyes with a look of desire, awe, and relief. His breath was hot against Sherlock’s skin, and when his hands pressed into Sherlock’s chest, pushing him back against the corridor wall, the man smiled his first genuine smile, “Thank you,” he whispered, dust falling from his hair as he shivered, his fingertips circling over Sherlock’s heart but falling away a moment later.

“You’re…welcome,” Sherlock replied, and after a minute of being unable to look away from John’s gaze, he moved the blade to his opposite hand, still clutching the book under his arm, and shoved his bloodied hand up John’s shirt to press it into the centre of his torso, smearing John’s skin with a buzz of sudden, sharp, jolting prickles that shot through the very core of him.

It seemed John felt it too, as he suddenly drew back, shoulders pulling back and spine going straight as the shivering all but vanished. His heart pulsed red for a heartbeat, and then he chuckled, “Sneaky,” he said, flicking a finger across Sherlock’s cheek, then took a deep breath through his nose, eyes falling shut as he grinned. “I can smell them. Hiding in their holes. The vermin.”

Sherlock nodded and then gestured for John to follow him, “Come on then,” he murmured, flexing his injured hand and keeping hold of the blade as he turned to make his way back, his legs shaking. “I want to see you do it once…then I’ll wait outside while you finish.”

“Oh, outside,” John sighed. “It’s almost enough to make me forget to eat.” He grinned. “Almost.”

“I recommend that you take one of their coats,” Sherlock said casually as he turned a corner, easily retracing his steps. “It’s a bit nippy.”

“And perhaps some shoes,” John noted, chuckling again.

Once he was back to the door in which he’d come, Sherlock paused, gave another thought for the unknowing people nearby, wondering how best to rid of any evidence of him being near them, and then opened the door, letting John go ahead of him and nodding toward the light and the soft chatter following behind him.

Licking his lips, John’s gaze stuck on the door opposite them as he began gliding across the landing on silent feet, coming to a stop in front of it, hand resting on the handle. Then, with a quick smirk at Sherlock, he slammed the door open, hitting one of the men who had dragged Sherlock into John’s cell, and pulled a man, perhaps in his mid-fifties, out and rammed him against the wall. “Hello again, Michael.”

The man’s eyes widened in terror at the sight of him and he started to tear at John’s arm, “Y-you! B-but…”

“Yes, it’s a bit of a surprise isn’t it,” John interrupted, his fingers circling over ‘Michael’s’ heart. “I would stop by for a chat, but you see, I haven’t eaten in so very long.”

The man had barely a moment to make a sound before John’s hand flattened out, and he leaned in, covering Michael’s gaping mouth with his own. At first, Michael twitched and scratched at John’s arm, but then his eyes rolled back up into his head, and the veins around his mouth blackened.

A scream pierced the air from within the room, and several cries of outrage rose, but John moaned, swallowing something as his hand pushed deeper into his prey’s chest, an audible crack becoming clear as Michael’s ribs broke under the pressure, and then… and then Michael began to age drastically. His salt and pepper hair turned white, his muscles perished, wrinkles formed, and as John drew away, Sherlock could see the wispy end of something being sucked through his lips like a strand of spaghetti as Michael’s body went rigid and silent. When John stepped away completely, the body fell to the floor, and he hummed in satisfaction.

Sherlock blinked and stumbled back a few steps, before he gripped at the blade in his hand, shot through with fear and panic and overwhelming bewilderment. He had almost felt what it had been like for John, had pulsed with warmth, with energy, with desire and gratification, had basked and enjoyed and drowned in it, and it only made Sherlock more afraid.

He looked up from the withered body to stare at John just as a shot rang out, tearing into the shirt at John’s shoulder. Sherlock’s own shoulder jerked simultaneously, knocking him off balance with a flare of pressure, as if he’d been hit, and he stumbled to the floor, dropping the book and the blade with a grunt.

John growled, sparing Sherlock little more than a glance before glaring into the room. A second shot tore through the air and sliced through John’s side, and he charged in, out of Sherlock’s view. Another scream, and the feeling of euphoria returned once more, the burning that had tickled at his side and shoulder fading away.

Panting, Sherlock pushed up with trembling arms and listened to the scrambling and shouting, grabbing for the blade beside him when someone seemed to make it past John and out to where Sherlock was. It was a woman. She saw him, recognised him, and stupidly went for him, the loaded gun in her hand was lifted and fired. Sherlock cringed at the sound, hissing when the bullet grazed his ear, and then got to his feet, knocking the woman’s outstretched arm aside just as she fired once more, and then kicked her back with a strike to her diaphragm.

As she coughed and wheezed, another man came flying out of the room and over the banister, only to land on his head on the ground floor, then John was there, cupping at the woman’s face and pushing her into the wall, her head slamming into the hard brick. She fell next to the emaciated body, unconscious. John gave Sherlock a look of annoyance, then headed back into the room again.

Sherlock huffed and after a moment picked up the book from the floor and descended the stairs quickly, turning to go into the archive before he noticed that man who had fallen over the banister was wearing his coat. He frowned with a glare and walked over, yanking it from the man’s body and pulling it on, emptying the pockets of what wasn’t his, which was most of it, and finally flicking the collar up. Another person screamed and Sherlock felt a shiver of pleasure run through him, making his breath short and his eyelids flutter, and he glanced up as he walked into the archive room to take all he could, filling his pockets with what he deemed the most interesting and vital.

Just as he was about to leave, the candles and matches caught his eye once more. Again, a wave of heat racked his body, followed by a jolt in his back, though it faded fast. He sighed and after slipping a small notepad he found into his inner pocket, Sherlock reached for the matches and glanced around as he stepped back out, pocketing something else at the last moment. Sherlock looked up the stairs, matches still in hand, and wandered to the front door to step out and wait outside, looking up at the sky, trying to both think and clear his mind at the same moment.

Another wave of heat shivered through him, quickly succeeded by a second, and then four shots, followed by a long silence. Several minutes passed, but then John stepped out, pulling on a dark brown coat that reached his mid-thy, feet clad in a pair of loosely tied boots.

As soon as the cold air hit his face, he hummed, running his hands over the cold stone of the wall as he stared up at the sky. “It’s been so long,” he muttered, his voice filled with a childlike awe that had no place being connected to whatever it was that he was.

“Hm.” Sherlock looked at him, watching his face and the way the wind played with his hair, amazed at how normal he seemed on the outside. Flashes of John’s grin, his eyes, the touch of his hand on Sherlock’s chest, the way he moved, the things he could do and the wilted body dropping from his grasp, pushed into the back of Sherlock’s mind and made him look away again, and he swallowed, glancing down at the matches, the bloodied blade, and the oozing wound across his palm. “We’re not done here.”

John hummed in agreement, lingering on the feeling of the wind on his face for several moments before answering, “Too much evidence.”

“I told no one of coming here or about the… ‘case.’” Sherlock said and turned to look up at the building, not sure about having it licked in flames being a good idea. Not to mention it would take too long to engulf the entire place. He’d need something to fan the flames and spread the fire quickly, thicker. “Not the first time something of this nature has happened – Obviously not quite like this, but…”

“How does one explain ten bodies?” John asked rhetorically to complete Sherlock’s sentence. “Five of which are-” his mouth split into a devilish grin. “-much older than they should be.”

Sherlock just about hid his grimace of fear and turned his eyes back to John, “Do you have to do that? ‘Suck souls?’ Can another form of… sustenance be just as good? Can you survive without it?” he asked and then frowned. “How old are you?”

“Old enough,” John replied, and chuckled. “Afraid of little old me, Sherlock?” He came up beside Sherlock, lifting his arm and cupping his wounded hand almost reverently. “I could fix it for you. I could do whatever you wanted me to do. But I must feed, Sherlock, or I will die.”

“Maybe you should,” Sherlock murmured lowly and was unable to retain eye contact with John for more than a second or two, his hair standing on end, his heart thundering, and his head full to bursting.

“Maybe,” John agreed, caressing Sherlock’s hand, and then reached up to cup the back of Sherlock’s head, and kissed him.

Sherlock blinked and allowed the kiss for a moment, feeling a sizzle of energy, of power and a tempting surge of exhilaration, before he jerked his head back, pressing his lips together, afraid of the same fate that ‘Michael’ suffered, and locked gazes with John, “What are doing?”

John just grinned, and held up Sherlock’s hand again, wiping away the blood with his coat sleeve to reveal perfectly healthy, whole skin.

“Wha--” Sherlock yanked his hand away and touched his palm, pressing, stroking and even pinching the skin in disbelief. Feeling dizzy with amazement and perplexity, Sherlock then reached up to touch his head, his lip, and wrenched his shirt up to expose the healthy stretch of pale skin over his heaving ribcage. “You…didn’t say you could do that…” His voice sounded small to his own ears and he touched his hand again, just to make sure.

John smirked, “There are many things I haven’t said,” he replied, “and many things I can do.”

Sherlock took a few steadying breaths and clenched his hand into a fist, “None of which you’ll tell me?” he mumbled, though he wasn’t sure he wanted to know about them currently, not when it felt as if he was having a panic attack and quite possibly a mental breakdown.

“Not yet,” John replied, then lightly pressed against Sherlock’s side, leading him to sit on the steps. “You have enough on your mind for now.”

Forcing a laugh, Sherlock found he couldn’t seem to stop and snorted and chuckled without humour, his temples pounding, his body shaking and sweating, and he suddenly found he was unable to breathe. He wheezed and gasped, still laughing, and then winced, flinching from John’s touch to grip at his hair.

“Sh, hush,” John cooed, rubbing a hand over Sherlock’s back. “It’s okay.”

Sherlock shrugged him off and clenched his eyes closed, grinding his teeth as he tried to quickly get a handle on his thoughts, on his emotions, on his body as a whole, and when he had, when he’d calmed and blanked his expression, when he’d locked most of everything away into the dark recesses of his mind, when he’d all but essentially rebooted, he opened his eyes.

Looking at John Sherlock took out one of the books from his pockets, an idea forming once everything started up again, “Everything will be once we’ve solved our current issue,” he murmured, scanning pages, looking for a spell, an incantation, a ritual, that would cleanse the building behind him in some way.

John blinked at him, and then grinned, eyes sparkling in admiration, “Fascinating,” he breathed, watching Sherlock with an obsessive amount of attention as he flicked through the pages. Eventually, he came across a page that held a promising diagram of a building, and there were several notes with words such as ‘sage’, ‘hair’ and ‘fire’, along with what looked like another incantation.

“Hm. Convenient. – This will do,” Sherlock said, squinting in concentration as he tried to translate more of it. After a minute he re-entered the building and went back to the archive, rummaging through drawers and boxes of ingredients for all manner of rituals. Most of it he flung to the floor, leaving a mass of things in his wake, and then he gathered up an armful of candles.

Walking out into the foyer, he set the candles down randomly on the tiles, only lighting them once they were all set down with the matches, and pulled at a lock of his hair, cutting it with the bloodied knife, and then some of John’s as the man watched him in both amusement and pleasure.

“You’re a natural,” John told him as Sherlock bundled the hair and the sage together with a bit of string.

“Not exactly rocket science this,” Sherlock replied as he worked, pocketing the bundle for the moment. “It’s very primeval – Like you.” Sherlock wasn’t sure if he meant it as a compliment or an insult and glanced at John as he juggled the blade while he walked over to the nearest body, gripping and lifting the head, placing a bowl beneath, and slitting the throat. Blood spurted and poured thickly, filling it relatively quickly, and Sherlock waited, watching with an unfocused gaze, thinking instead of what the spell he was about to perform may or may not do.

If the book was correct, then the spell would remove any trace that they had been there in a blaze of flame. Whether it meant that literally or otherwise was unclear, but it was very clear that their presence would never have been felt in this place. With John stood leaning against the doorframe, perpetual grin on his lips, Sherlock walked back to the candles and, using the sage and hair as a brush, drew a symbol in the tiles, then lit the opposite end on fire using one of the candles, and started to recite the incantation. When he finished it, he placed the burning end of the ‘brush’ against the symbol he’d drawn.

As soon as the flames had touched it, the blood caught fire, burning a mix of blue, yellow, and white, almost making it look green. The flames ate away at the symbol, and then spread out over the floor in multiple directions, disappearing up the stairs, out the front door, and into the archive. The interior blazed brightly for several seconds, as did the room above where the bodies still lingered, while the sides of the candles dripped and melted in the emerald light, erasing any fingerprints that had been left behind.

Sherlock took hold of John’s arm and tugged him back outside, just in case, “That went better than expected, I must say,” he said under his breath, making sure he had all he wanted from the archive, his pockets heavy with books and papers. He still held the knife and he looked at it as the flames continued on throughout the building, blazing in windows and even venturing up the front door.

The otherworldly light emanating from it glinted in the congealing blood on the blade and Sherlock glanced over into John’s face, the flickering light striping and caressing the features of his face and glistening in his eyes, bringing an eerie gleam to them.

John chuckled as he watched the green glow flow through and around the building he had be trapped in for… however long, leaning into Sherlock’s arm as he brushed his hand through his overgrown hair, “Free at last.”

“Not quite,” Sherlock reminded him and forced his gaze to harden as he pointed the bloodied blade to his chest, signalling their bond with an arrogant arch of one eyebrow, forcing his mouth to quirk with assurance he didn’t feel.

John just stuck his tongue out at him, and swivelled on his heel, walking out and away from the building and stretching, his joints cracking with each new rotation of a limb, “What year is it?” he asked as he clicked his fingers.

“2010,” Sherlock told him, confused and taken aback by John’s playfulness.

John huffed, not turning back as he rotated the shoulder that had been shot, “Three years. The bastards,” he said quietly.

Sherlock glanced back at the building, watching the coloured fire continue to flicker and crawl up walls and along the banister, “You’ve not missed much,” he mumbled.

“I’ve missed everything,” John replied, moving on to his other shoulder, but quickly moving on to his neck. He stopped after a few moments and looked up at the sky, at the stars through the clouds, at the moon. “The sky stays the same, but everything under it changes.”

“Regrettably three years doesn’t mean much in the way of change. You’ve not missed much at all. Trust me,” Sherlock scoffed and rummaged through his pockets, finding his phone and checking the battery life before walking over to John. “You can easily catch up though if you’d like. I’ll lend you my laptop once we get--” He stopped and thought of his flat, of his flatmate, of his landlady, and hesitated a second or two too long, before he sighed, finishing his sentence. “Once we get back to the flat.”

John finally looked over at him and gave him a Cheshire-cat smile, “What’s the matter? Not allowed friends over after dark?”

“I don’t have friends,” Sherlock retorted curtly and gave the building another glance, rechecking his pockets, going over what he’d taken, what he had with him going in and what he now had going out, and began strolling away towards the main road.

John’s hum was quickly followed by scuffed footsteps, and the shorter man was soon by his side again, hands stiffened in the stolen coat’s pockets, “Well, you have me now at least,” he said, then gave Sherlock a cheeky look out of the corner of his eye, “Master.”

Sherlock shot him a narrowed look, “Shut up,” he said briskly, but couldn’t help the twitch of his mouth. He glanced away, thought about his options, about his responsibilities, and then let out a long breath, unsure if he would ever be able to come to terms with what had happened to him, what he now knew.

John laughed in reply, “Like that, did we?” he asked, almost mocking, but still highly playful. “Should I call you ‘Master’ more often?”

“Be quiet,” Sherlock told him, frustrated that he had to quickly stifle a laugh. With the main road in sight, Sherlock called for a taxi, lifting his phone to his ear to signal an end to their conversation.

“Yes, Master,” John replied with a smirk, and returned his attention to his surroundings. He seemed to be absolutely enthralled with every tiny thing, lingering behind to examine a bush, to watch their leaves shake in the wind, the frost on the grass, the way the gravel of the path crunched underfoot.

Sherlock rolled his eyes, turned and whistled sharply at him, “Come,” he ordered with a condescending smile, walking backwards and then waiting by the kerb, idling along it and hiding the bloodied blade in his pocket after wrapping a handkerchief around it. “I hope you’re not going to be this annoying the entire time.”

“Oh I don’t know,” John shrugged, still ambling along in his own time, “I can be a bit curious when the mood strikes.”

“Could you at least be curious about interesting things?” Sherlock complained as he waited, checking his emails on his phone.

“Tell you what, why don’t _you_ spend three years trapped in the same room, and _then_ tell me what’s interesting.”

“It wouldn’t be the ground, that’s for sure,” Sherlock huffed under his breath. “How did you even get caught? They would have had to catch you first before they slammed you in that cell, how did they do that? What with you being some powerful, soul-sucking, deity, I would have thought you’d not be so easily trapped.”

John snorted, “Deity? Don’t flatter yourself, Sherlock.” He scuffed his boot along the ground, sending pebbles skipping across the pavement. “I am hardly a god.”

“I don’t know what you are!” Sherlock shot back. “I don’t know what to call you. I don’t know what defines you. God. Monster. Demon. Entity. I have no idea. I don’t know what to call a being that sucks the very life out of someone with relish, that picks a man up with barely any effort at all, that has so much strength, so much power, that it’s utterly ridiculous, impossible and disturbing! – I don’t know if you even age.”

John grinned, “’Ridiculous, impossible and disturbing’,” he repeated, biting his lower lip as he looked up into Sherlock’s eyes. “Did you like it? Watching me drain him. Did you enjoy it?” He stepped closer, pulling the two of them to stop as he moved in front of Sherlock, pressing their chests together and breathing in Sherlock’s air. “Was it as delicious for you as it was for me?”

Sherlock clenched his jaw at the resulting shiver up his spine, both of fear and an odd twisted sort of pleasure, as he recalled the event in question, remembering the flush of heat, of power and satisfaction whenever John fed, “No.” The lie was short and emotionless, and he turned his head aside, looking out into the road of passing cars, ignoring the way John’s breath played down his throat. “It sickened me. – I’ve seen death. Murder. I’ve watched people die in front of me. Seen and found mangled corpses. I’ve seen the dark, twisted side of humanity. Yet nothing could have prepared me for the horrific massacre that you just committed.”

“Liar,” John whispered, leaning closer, his mouth brushing against Sherlock’s ear. “You want it. You want more. I can smell it.” He inhaled through his nose against Sherlock’s neck to make his point. “You reek of want.”

Sherlock clenched his fists, his phone creaking in his tightened grasp, “Do you suck souls because you haven’t one of your own?” he said, tone sharp and brisk, aiming to hurt and annoy. Sherlock stepped back and turned his back on John, ignoring the trembling in his legs.

John harrumphed, remaining silent for several long seconds, but then Sherlock felt fingers circling the upper right side of his back, “You smell even more delicious, now that I’ve fed you,” he said instead of answering.

“Such a shame you can’t do anything about that,” Sherlock retorted, his heart beating slightly faster with a bloom of warmth over his chest. He frowned, glancing down, and then pulled his coat closed tightly.

John just hummed, laying his hand flat over Sherlock’s back, “A travesty.”

Sherlock allowed the touch and dug his fingernails into his palm, thankful when their taxi finally arrived. He pulled away, opened the door and slid into the backseat, giving his address as he tucked his phone away and played ignorant to the look the driver gave him after his snappy tone of voice.

Sherlock wasn’t sure what to do about the flat, about John being in the flat, about John being in the flat with both Mrs Hudson and his flat mate in close proximity. He couldn’t harm them. He wouldn’t. Sherlock was in control. Sherlock was, as John put it, his ‘Master.’ Everything was fine.

John, meanwhile, was content to continue his irritating examination of everything, looking at each part of the cab in detail before turning to look out of the window, watching the world fly past with a smile on his face, not caring about Sherlock’s inner struggles.

Once they arrived at the flat, Sherlock lingered a moment in the car, unsure and thrumming with thoughts and emotions he purposely disregarded. He gave John a furtive glance then paid the driver and left John there, quickly striding to the front door, pulling the key from the inner secret pocket of his coat. He unlocked and opened the black door quietly, looking around for any sign of Mrs Hudson as he stepped inside, and then looked up the stairs.

John swayed in a little later, looking around briefly before his eyes landed on Mrs Hudson’s door, “Oh, Sherlock,” he whispered, hunger dripping back into his voice once again. “Oh she smells _beautiful_.”

“You lay one finger on her, and I’ll kill you,” Sherlock growled and reached past him to shut the door, glaring at John and looming intimidatingly over him.

“Just a bite,” John muttered, looking around Sherlock to gaze longingly at her door again. “Just… just a nip.”

“No,” Sherlock told him and grabbed his wrist, leading him up the stairs slowly but determinedly, digging his fingers into John’s arm and increasing his grasp with each step. He paused when he reached the doors to the kitchen and living room, and took a breath. He chose to walk in through the kitchen, wanting to get to his room as quickly as possible, but was stopped by a sudden hand on his shoulder the moment he stepped in.

“Finally!” his flat mate, Steven, hissed, glowering at Sherlock. “Where have you been? – God I could strangle you! I found eyeballs in the fridge. Eyeballs! I told you, Sherlock, I told you about your stupid experiments and your stupid, disgusting—”

“Evening,” John interrupted, giving Steven a bright and friendly smile as he stepped forward.

“Who’re you?” Steven asked, flicking his eyes between Sherlock and John rapidly, before he stopped back on Sherlock. “Who’s this?”

“John,” Sherlock replied. “John, this is Steven. Steven, this is John. John is my…friend.”

“You don’t have friends,” Steven scoffed rudely, and Sherlock pressed his lips together in response, watching as Steven lifted his eyebrow at the way Sherlock was tightly gripping John’s wrist. Sherlock almost let him go, but decided against it.

John tilted his head to the side as he looked up at Steven, his body both lax and tense in the most impossible of ways that almost gave him an air of normality, "Hello," he said simply, a facade of a soft, cuddly man slipping seamlessly into place. "Sorry for making you wait, we were in a bit of a pickle."

“Which is code for what, exactly?” Steven asked, suspicious and overly aggravated, gesturing to Sherlock’s head. “Is that blood in your hair and on your face?”

Sherlock clenched his jaw, rolling his eyes and pulled John through the kitchen and down the small corridor into his bedroom, turning to face Steven with a sigh, having heard the man aggressively and sulkily follow, “Problem?”

Steven’s glare increased ten fold, “The eyeballs. Get rid of them. Or I’ll report you to the landlord.”

“Yes, because that worked out just swimmingly before,” Sherlock drawled sarcastically, shooting Steven a patronising smile. “If you don’t like it. Move out. – In fact, please do. It would be most useful.” Sherlock slammed the door in Steven’s face.

John scowled at the door, eyes following something Sherlock couldn't see, "What a deplorable man," he said. "Tasteless. Utterly tasteless."

“Yes. Well,” Sherlock said, looking John over and then walking around to start unloading his pockets onto a nearby dresser, “he’s better than the last three.”

John continued to stare at the door for several long seconds, then turned back to Sherlock, his smirk returning full swing as his mask was flung away, "So this is where you live," he said, looking around the room, opening the wardrobe and running his fingers over the dressing gown hanging off it.

“And now where you will,” Sherlock replied, keeping an eye on him as he stacked the books and papers and carefully pulled out and put down the wrapped, bloodied blade. “Do you sleep?”

"Usually," John replied, looking through the shirts that had been hung on the rail. "Do you have a spare razor?"

“Yes. You may use the bathroom whenever you wish. – Use my adjoining door.” Sherlock motioned to it and then straightened, shrugging off his coat and watching John’s fingertips as they skimmed and brushed over his clothes.

"Wonderful," John muttered, scratching at his chin through the straggly beard and shutting the wardrobe door again. "The shower calls." He stepped close to Sherlock and ran a hand through his curls, pulling at the dried blood. "Won't be long." With one last smirk, he made his way over to the bathroom and slipped through the door, locking it behind him.

Sherlock stared at the door for a moment or two and then looked away, swallowing thickly and moving to sit down on the edge of his bed with a shaky breath through his nose. Everything was bubbling up in his head again, spilling over in flooding waves, and he grimaced as he increased his hold on it all, fighting the anxiety and the panic back once more and trying not to think too deeply about it, trying not to become overwhelmed. With another breath he arched his head amongst a long, deep exhale, let his eyelids flutter closed, and withdrew into himself.

Upon opening his eyes, Sherlock looked around at the mess, which surrounded him, at the cracked walls and doors and floors of his once organised, clean and ordered mind palace. Thoughts and memories and facts leaked out at every bend, collecting in the corners and running amok through the hallways. Sherlock let them pass him by, turned, and walked through it all, both lost but not at the same instance.

Walls rippled and collapsed either side of him, only to rebuild and turn and unfold into new places with each step he took, creating more routes, more paths, and more rooms behind more doors. It was dizzying and frustrating, but mandatory. When he reached the end of the seemingly endless corridor, Sherlock extended one hand and spread his fingers over the white wall, watching as dark, thick wood spiralled out from his touch, creating a large, ancient, thick door. It was ominous and foreboding and taller than him by several inches. He looked up at it stretching above him and heard John’s echoing chuckle behind it, heard the screams of those he’d killed, heard the thrum of unexplainable magic, and felt bombardments of coiling, powerful energy ripple out from every corner.

Sherlock clenched his jaw as his heart thundered and the skin of his chest burned, and suddenly locked the door with a recognisable key. The wood of the door crackled before him in response, several symbols carving themselves into it, glowing a throbbing, familiar red, and Sherlock stepped away, glancing down at his shirt as it saturated with blood, soaking the fabric and dripping to the floor at his feet. Unbuttoning it revealed a pattern, a mark, engraved over where his heart raced, and Sherlock shuddered as it glowed with each and every heartbeat.

With a gasp Sherlock jerked his head up, back in his bedroom, and grabbed at his torso, breathing heavily and shaking. John was crouched before him, hair still damp from his shower, chin and chest bare, though the towel he had used was draped over his left shoulder.

His eyes were wide in wonder, and he reached forward to run his fingers over Sherlock’s forehead, "Where do you go?" he asked soothingly, his fingertips running over the dried blood.

Sherlock blinked at him and turned very slightly into John’s touch as he came fully back to himself, dropping his hands to his sides, “Feel better?” he murmured, blatantly ignoring John’s question as he looked over the smooth skin of John’s face. “You look better.”

John smirked and pulled the towel away, using it to scrub at his hair, "Fresh as a spring morning," he replied, the towel covering his eyes and leaving Sherlock time to explore his chest. He was well toned, not what you would call 'buff', but definitely muscled, and there, sitting over his heart, was the mark he had seen in his mind. It was a pale scar, with a cobweb spreading out from it, up towards John’s left shoulder, which seemed to ripple and wave as John moved.

With a frown Sherlock touched his own chest briefly, wondering if he too had been scarred in the same way, they both had suffered a similar pain during the incantation, “I should do the same,” he said, standing quickly and moving to pull out some clean clothes from his wardrobe as well as his dressing gown. “Stay here. Do not leave this room.”

“Yes sir,” John replied, giving him a mock salute, then turned to fall on the bed with a flop and a sigh.

“…My laptop is in the middle drawer to your left,” Sherlock mumbled as he walked into the bathroom. The moment the door was shut and locked behind him was the moment he crumpled up his shirt to under his armpits and stepped to the foggy mirror, wiping it clean to inspect his chest.

There was another mark there, almost exactly the same as the one on John, except there was nothing more to it than the symbol, slightly raised over his heart. His skin was slightly red around it, as though irritated, but he felt no form of discomfort from it.

Sherlock touched it with his fingertips and followed it with a trembling hand for a moment, before he clenched it in a fist and stopped, pushing his knuckles into the mark. Looking at his reflection, his eyes, and the dried blood on his forehead, in his hair, near his mouth, and spotted at his ear, Sherlock began undressing and dropping his dirty clothes to the floor at his feet, putting the clean ones aside. He felt different. He was different. He felt vulnerable and open, like a sore, freshly opened wound.

He showered slowly. A cold shower. Numbing his extremities, numbing his mind, and then dried and dressed, wrapping his dressing gown around himself before he re-entered his bedroom and dumped his blood-spattered and dirtied clothes to a heap in the corner to deal with at a later date.

John seemed to have found his laptop, and was perusing the Internet from the nest he had created from Sherlock’s duvet and pillows. He was still half naked, but then there wasn’t much other than the filthy, blood stained shirt and coat for him to wear. He seemed comfortable enough anyway, though why he had to mess Sherlock’s bed up was a mystery.

“Made yourself at home, I see,” Sherlock uttered as he eyed the man up with some annoyance. “It’s okay. I prefer sleeping on the floor.”

“Nope,” John replied, shutting the laptop and jumping up to stand behind Sherlock. “You sleep in your bed.” He circled his arms around Sherlock, pulling him close and resting his cheek against his shoulder. “Where I can keep you safe.”

Sherlock stiffened in the embrace and turned to glance at John from the corner of his eyes, confused and irritated with his odd and switching behaviour, “‘Keep me safe?’” he huffed.

“I felt your pain as my own,” he explained, his right hand travelling over Sherlock’s chest to rest over the mark, over his heart. “You’ve become a part of me.” He nuzzled at the back of Sherlock’s neck. “You are mine.”

“…I rather thought it was the other way around,” Sherlock muttered, not thinking of how warm John’s hand felt or the phantom feeling of blood and pain and pleasure blooming as one with a prickle across his torso. “You belong to me. I bound us together after all.”

John hummed, “I may be yours to command, but you are mine to protect,” he replied, clutching at Sherlock’s shirt, resting his forehead in the same spot he had just nuzzled. “We are extensions of one another now. Our hearts beat as one.” He reached for Sherlock’s hand and moved it so that his fingers were pressing against John’s throat. “Do you feel it?”

Sherlock closed his eyes and then looked down at John’s grasp on his shirt, “Yes,” he whispered in reply, glancing aside to see the reflection of them both in the mirror on his wardrobe.

He could see John in profile, his eyes closed and his face relaxed as he pressed his forehead into Sherlock’s neck. He looked calm, peaceful, as his fingers wound themselves around Sherlock’s wrist, then slid up the back of his hand, entwining their fingers together.

It was obvious that John had been starved of physical contact. Hungry for company had been an understatement; John was practically ravenous for it. How long in those three years had John been alone in that cell with no one but himself, his own thoughts, his own voice, his own memories. With nothing but the pieces of cooling clothes from those he’d fed from, he’d killed, he’d all out murdered. How long would it have taken for him to give in and take a life so he wouldn’t die? Five hours? Six? More? How long had it taken to unbalance John’s mental stability?

John smiled lightly, his lips curling and bringing a pleasant look to his face, and he turned his head to look at the mirror, meeting Sherlock’s eyes in the reflection almost lazily, “I’ve never felt so grounded before,” he said quietly, happily, as he lowered their joined hands.

Sherlock, unsure on what to say, lowered his gaze with a hum, “Find anything interesting?” he asked, changing the subject and flicking his eyes to the laptop in explanation.

John chuckled lightly, “America’s got a black president,” he said, eyes dancing in the light. “’Barack Obama’. I wish him well.”

“How is that interesting?” Sherlock scoffed and after a second in which he allowed the two of them to remain together, he finally pulled away from John to pick up the laptop, skimming the amount of tabs John had opened and giving the browser history a glance.

“For someone who can still remember black slaves being an acceptable thing, it’s interesting,” John told him, remaining where he was for several moments as though he could soak up the residue of Sherlock’s presence, then curled up in the nest again.

“What else can you remember?” Sherlock inquired, wondering if he could calculate John’s age if he knew how long he’d be around for. He noticed John had found his website and looked over at him, not sure what to make of how at home John was in his bed.

“Things,” John replied, his voice muffled by the duvet, but then he shifted so that he was leaning on folded arms. “I remember canon-fire. I remember holding a sword in my hand, commanding my men as we charged the French. I remember treating children, the sick, the dying, as the Spanish flu ravaged Europe.” He reached out and ran a finger down Sherlock’s spine. “I remember the fear of being caught with a man, of the rope that awaited us should we be discovered.”

Sherlock frowned, finding that the new information only made his thoughts churn rougher, made the dark, ominous door in his mind bulge and glow, but he found another question already dangling from his tongue and couldn’t stop it from tumbling, “Were you made or born?” He put the laptop down upon the bedside drawer and gazed down at John. “And what will happen when I eventually die? – If you feel my pain. If you are a part of me, an extension of me, then what becomes of you when I die?”

Looking up at him, John pulled the duvet closer about him, “I don’t know,” he replied, voice scarcely more than a whisper. “I cannot remember a time when I was not what I am, but in my earliest memory, I am already a man. My childhood escapes me, like so many things.” He frowned and looked away, raking a hand through his hair. “I remembered, before. Before that cage. I know I did.” He started tugging at the blonde locks, his face twisting in frustration. “I knew. I knew. I knew…”

Grabbing at his hand, Sherlock stopped the movement and gently pulled it free, “All right,” he said lowly.

John shivered under his fingers, a look of fear suddenly blossoming and uprooting any form of control he seemed to have possessed before, “They stole them,” he muttered. “My memories. They’re gone. I can’t find them.” He brought Sherlock’s hand up to cup at his face and he shut his eyes tight. “They were mine, and they took them from me.”

“You took more from them,” Sherlock reminded him, finding his mouth quirking before he realised what he was doing and stopped it. He thought of the withered body for a second too long, replaying the moment the body wrinkled with age and collapsed as an empty shell at John’s feet, and blinked to force it back.

John blinked his eyes open again and looked up into Sherlock’s, relaxing slightly, “Yes. Yes I… I did.” The corner of his lips curled slightly. “They took a part of what made me whole, and I took a part of them.”

“Hm.” Sherlock let his hands slip away from John’s face leisurely and then picked up the laptop again, walking around the bed to sit gingerly on the other side, still in his dressing gown. John had taken more than a part of them. He had taken all of them, some more than others. The ones he fed off had been unrecognisable. John had taken their life, their self, and their dignity. “We need to give you a life. I assume you don’t have one. Not one on file. – We need to give you an identity.”

“Yes,” John agreed, sliding over to sit next to him like an over-eager puppy. “I need a story. A history. One that hasn’t been stolen from me.”

Sherlock nodded and glanced at him, “Anything specific you have in mind?”

John bit his lip in thought, “Watson,” he said. “I want to be called Watson.”

“John Watson,” Sherlock said aloud and then inclined his head, liking the way it sounded. “Do you want a middle name?”

John frowned, “Do you have one?”

“Not everyone has a middle name, but I thought I’d ask,” Sherlock told him and turned to him. “What do you want to be? – You said you liked the field of medicine, that you treated the sick, that you wanted to know about any changes in such things in your absence, perhaps you can be a doctor?”

“Army doctor,” John told him with a nod. “And Hamish. I want my middle name to be Hamish.”

“Hamish?” Sherlock repeated with a huff. “Really?”

John frowned at him, “It’s… important.”

Sherlock squinted at him in interest and then turned to the laptop again, “Fine. John Hamish Watson it is.”

“And I’m… 39 years old,” John continued, pulling a pillow to his chest.

“No,” Sherlock disagreed with a shake of his head. “You look younger – 36.”

“36,” John repeated with a nod. “My birthday should be in March.”

“March 31st?” Sherlock murmured with a glance at him with an arched eyebrow. John considered it for several moments, and then nodded.

As Sherlock and John sat together working on giving the man a fictional life, a fictional family, Sherlock tried to make each inch of it realistic, giving John an imprint within the years upon years in which John had been no one at all. He inserted him into the world, into records, into existence. He gave John ID, a passport, gave him personal, pervious records of birth, school, college, University, work and the army, and created several bank accounts in his name, taking money from those that were already cheating the system without remorse.

Sherlock barely blinked as he worked, his fingers cramping and his eyes flitting from one tab to another, from documents and forms, and hacking into places he hadn’t visited for a long time, making sure there were no loose ends, nothing that his brother could pick at and follow. He hunched over and felt no guilt as he twisted things to suit him, played with the inner workings of England.

It took him a long time to finish, his eyes sore and his stomach cramping from hunger, and when he finally looked up with a crick in his neck, he wasn’t sure for a moment how much time had truly gone by.

Sunlight was creeping across the wall from a crack in his curtains, a line which John was watching avidly, even as he lay on his front next to Sherlock. He looked ready to pounce, almost mesmerised by the light, but remained where he was, both impatient and content all at once.

Sherlock checked the time and then rubbed his face, straining his ears to listen out for Steven, “You’ll need more clothes,” he uttered at random, eyes on John’s bared shoulders.

“Jumpers,” John responded idly. “I like jumpers.”

“…Do you,” Sherlock mumbled, turning his nose up at the response and going online with a slower tapping of his fingers than normal. He brought up a few jumpers and gestured to them. “Like that?”

John turned away from his light watching to look at the screen, examining each of the images before pointing, “That one,” he said, indicating a black and white striped one, “and that one,” a blue striped jumper, “and that one,” a beige cable knit thing. “Those look good.”

“Dear God,” Sherlock groused, as he looked them over. “Did you forget a sense of style as well as your memories? – Fine.”

“’Style’?” John smirked. “What are you, the fashion police?”

“How can you like these jumpers? Just…how?” Sherlock motioned to them and then opened another tab to look for trousers in John’s size, looking at some denim jeans.

“They look comfortable,” John replied with a shrug, moving back to watch the line of light travel across the wall.

“Stop that,” Sherlock snapped and shoved the laptop at him. “Here. Do your own shopping. Do something useful instead of just…lying there as if butter wouldn’t melt.” Standing up from the bed Sherlock readjusted his dressing gown, feeling lightheaded from hunger, and reached for his bedroom door. “Stay here.”

John stuck his tongue out at him, but sat up and pulled the computer onto his knees, “I’ll make sure to find only the most ugly things,” he said.

“I don’t doubt it,” Sherlock grumbled and left the room, standing in the hallway for a moment with his hand gripping the door handle. He sighed, clenched his eyes closed, shook away the crawling need to recharge, and made his way into the kitchen.

Steven wasn’t up yet, something Sherlock was thankful for, and he grabbed for the kettle, determined to have a coffee while he quickly made himself a few rounds of toast, stuffing his face and sitting down at the kitchen table.

Over the course of the night, or early morning, no matter how much time he was spending with John, it was only generating more questions than answers. If what he was saying was true, then Sherlock would be unable to discover John’s age, though the memories he had shared made it clear that he was at least 200 years old. He was still no closer to finding out what exactly John could do, what he was, _who_ he was… It was all maddening, and it only made that door throb the more he tried to think about it.

Lost in his thoughts, Sherlock hadn’t even realised that time had passed until the laptop landed next to his hand with a thud, showing the image of a Peruvian hat with a bobble on the top, “How about one of these?” John asked, sitting down opposite him with a smirk, barely hidden behind his folded hands.

“What are you doing?” Sherlock glared, pushing the laptop aside slightly and finding the rest of his toast cold on the plate before him. He nodded back toward his room. “I told you to stay in my room. Go back there.”

“No,” John replied, tilting his head to the side. “I think I like it here.” To make his point, he leaned back in his chair and stretched his legs out, his toes brushing against Sherlock’s. “Besides, I thought it would be nice to meet your landlady.”

Before Sherlock could say a word, there was a knock on the door, “Morning! Is anyone up?” came the familiar voice of Mrs Hudson through the wood.

Sherlock stood up instantly, looming over the table and glowered, “Go back into my room,” he demanded lowly. “You will not meet her. You will not touch her. I will not have you--”

There was the sound of clumsy, familiar footsteps coming down the stairs, and then the sound of Steven murmuring to Mrs Hudson out on the landing, before the kitchen door opened. Sherlock looked up quickly as Steven stepped in, the man’s eyes immediately jumping between John and Sherlock with a narrowed, disgusted look while he made his way toward the kettle. Sherlock ignored him and straightened as Mrs Hudson shuffled in with a bright smile, waving some letters toward him.

“The mail arr- Oh!” she paused, taking in the sight of a shirtless John sat at the kitchen table before looking up at Sherlock. “You didn’t tell me you had company, Sherlock.”

“Thank you, Mrs Hudson. You can go now,” Sherlock told her, snatching the envelopes from her fingers.

“Not going to introduce her to your… ‘friend,’ Sherlock?” Steven asked with a mocking and sardonic tone.

Ignoring the other two men in the room, John rose to his feet and gave Mrs Hudson a kind smile, “Sorry for intruding. It wasn’t exactly planned,” he apologised ruefully, and held out his hand for her to shake. “Doctor John Watson.”

“Oh,” Mrs Hudson replied with an impressed smile as she took his hand, “a doctor. It’s nice to meet you. I’m Martha, but every calls me Mrs Hudson.” She looked over at Sherlock in approval and gave John a once over again, eyes catching on the scarring over his shoulder.

John shuffled slightly, as though he were uncomfortable, “Uh, sorry for the state of undress. I didn’t bring a change of shirt, and the one I wore last night has a few… stains on it.”

Sherlock pursed his mouth tightly when Steven made a noise of repulsion, “John…helped me on a case,” he told her, hoping it was enough to appease her and stop her from grinning at him the way she was.

“Did he?” Mrs Hudson asked, her smile only growing brighter.

“Yes,” John agreed, pulling his hand back and folding his arms behind his back in an extremely casual parade rest. “It was quite extraordinary. Sherlock really is quite amazing.” She beamed at his words, nodding in agreement.

With a twitch of his eye, split between wanting to blush at the compliment and sneer at it at, Sherlock moved around the table and stepped between them, pushing his back into John and urging him back a step, whilst taking Mrs Hudson gently by the shoulders to turn her around, “Go away,” he told her.

“Rude,” Steven muttered, leaning on the counter and folding his arms. “Why do you even put up with him, Mrs Hudson?”

“If you have to ask then you don’t need to know,” she replied, following Sherlock’s direction and heading towards the door. “It was lovely to meet you John. I hope I see you again.”

“Likewise, Mrs Hudson,” he replied, giving her a nod and a smile.

“No, no. You won’t. Nope,” Sherlock told her, urging her on down the stairs and shooting a glare at John briefly. “It was a one time thing.”

“Oh you couldn’t possibly do that to that poor man,” Mrs Hudson retorted, giving him a light slap on the shoulder. “He seems a decent enough fellow.”

“He’s not,” Sherlock shot back a little too curtly, making the woman jump. He sighed and forced a smile. “He’s a very busy man, Mrs Hudson. Illnesses to misdiagnose, forms to fill, patients to ignore. – It was merely circumstance that brought us together. Something never to be repeated. Ever.”

“Oh don’t be so hard on him,” she groused as they approached her door. “You’ve been saying that you needed an assistant. Maybe the doctor could help you on your cases!”

Sherlock exhaled loudly, “How can you like him from such a brief greeting, you barely know him!”

Mr Hudson sighed and gave him a sad smile, “It’s not every day you bring someone home, Sherlock,” she said, bringing a hand to rest on the one Sherlock was using to guide her. “I worry about you, about how lonely you are and… He seems to like you.”

“I’m not lonely,” Sherlock frowned with a snort, feeling suddenly and oddly claustrophobic and hot under the collar, his heart beginning to roughly thump. It made him remember the mark on his chest. “I’m very not…lonely.” He gestured with his other hand flippantly, getting angry and self-conscious. “I told you before, all that matters is the Work. All I need is the Work. Everything else is meaningless. Everything else is transport.”

She hummed, giving his hand a pat and stepping into her home, “I don’t think you believe that, “she said, and closed the door behind her.

Sherlock blinked at the door and stepped back, seeing the dark door in his mind bulge with John’s laughter, and quickly turned away, going back up and turning into the kitchen once more.

John was sitting at the kitchen table, a glass of water in his hands, but he was watching Steven as he made his morning coffee. Nudging John’s shoulder, Sherlock signalled for him to go back to the bedroom angrily, keeping Steven in the corner of his eyes as the man made as much noise as possible.

Rolling his eyes, John picked up a slice of Sherlock’s cold toast and stuffed it in his mouth before retrieving the laptop and heading out of the kitchen, “See you Steven,” he said through his mouthful. “It was great meeting you.”

Steven watched him go and wrinkled his nose, “Yeah,” was all he said in reply, waiting until John had shut the door to Sherlock’s bedroom before he spoke again, turning to Sherlock. “Next time you have a nasty one night stand, at least have the decency to do it at their place. I don’t want to see your conquests.”

“Hm. Interesting. I could have sworn you had two different women over here within the course of three days last week,” Sherlock replied, finishing the rest of his toast and walking up to loom over the man. “One of which you had to pay to sleep with you.”

“At least I’m not a queer,” Steven shot back. “I had a feeling the moment I met you. I’ve always known that you were a sordid, freakish queer. – People like you make me sick.”

Sherlock smiled at him widely and walked away, “Ditto.”

When he entered his bedroom again, he found John had set the laptop on the drawers and was remaking the bed, straightening the pillows before returning to the duvet, “Enjoy that did you?” Sherlock asked angrily, shutting the door at his back a little to harshly. “Now she thinks you’re ‘a decent enough fellow.’ She won’t stop asking after you. On and on, it’ll go.” He moved over and swatted John away from the bed. “I told you not to touch her. I told you I don’t want you being near her.”

“Oh come on,” John smirked, stepping back and folding his arms. “I was bound to meet her at some point. And I’m sure Steven would have mentioned me, given the chance.”

“Mentioning you is different than you personally seeing and touching her. I can deal with you being a passing mention. A reference. But that’s all.” Sherlock told him, stepping close and trying to intimidate the calm and amused soul sucker before him. “You think I trust you? You think I want you anywhere near her after what you did? After what you said about her?”

“It was a compliment!” John exclaimed, irritation beginning to build.

“How is that considered a compliment?” Sherlock replied loudly, before he took a breath and lowered his voice. “Don’t touch her again.”

John gritted his teeth, but didn’t reply, holding Sherlock’s gaze for several long seconds before turning away and collecting the laptop from the drawers, sitting down on the floor against the wall and blatantly not looking at Sherlock.

“And after today, you can’t be seen. You have to stay in this room unless I say otherwise,” Sherlock told him, finding his words ridiculous even as he said them. “No one can know you’re living here. Not yet.” He ruffled a hand through his curls roughly, beginning to pace, glaring down at John. “Have you ordered your clothes yet?”

“Yes,” John replied, patently sulking as he looked up at the strip of light again. “I even ordered a phone.”

 “Good. Okay.” Sherlock stopped moving and sat down on the bed, aching all over. “Might as well order yourself a laptop too.”

John hummed, stretching his back and shoulders before searching it up. After he'd finished and set the device aside, he stretched again with a confused frown, "Is that you?"

Sherlock lifted his head and squinted over at him blearily, “What?”

Instead of answering, John rose and circled the bed, climbing on behind Sherlock and pressing his hands onto his shoulders. Fingers and thumbs massaged tense and aching muscles, and John hummed, moving his hands down Sherlock’s back.

For a second he tried to shrug John off, scowling and shifting to try and stop him, but sparks of pleasure jolted through Sherlock at such intensity that he stiffened and grimaced in delight, arching his spine, “Exactly how much of what I feel and experience do you also feel and experience?” he asked, not sure if he was annoyed about how bonded they were while his eyes rolled up and he reached to ground himself by gripping the edge of the mattress roughly. The question he asked made him paused however, and he pondered if the hunger he had felt earlier had been his own.

“I can feel what your muscles feel,” John told him, moving to his lower back. “I can’t feel my hands, but I can feel what they’re doing.” He reached a particularly painful spot and they both gave a simultaneous moan of relief when he soothed it. “I can feel your emotions racing through my blood… though I couldn’t last night. After I’d fed you.”

Sherlock opened his eyes, “When you say you ‘fed’ me. What… precisely do you mean by that?” he asked.

John paused, his hands falling still just above Sherlock’s hips, “What do you think I mean?” he asked, genuinely curious.

Sherlock didn’t reply, his mind whirling sluggishly, slow from the reorganisation of his mind, of the lack of sleep, but then he blinked and stood up, turning to face John. Memories of sensations fluttered through him, echoes of shivering pleasure whenever John sucked the life out of someone, of euphoria, of amusement and delight. Sherlock shook them away with a sudden shrug of his shoulders and then looked aside quickly, abruptly remembering the energised kiss between them, and tilted his head.

“You…gave me some of their life-force to heal me?” he asked quietly.

“Well, yes,” John replied with a confused smile, dropping his hands into his lap. “What did you think I was doing?”

“Oh God…” Sherlock mumbled, flushing cold with realisation and feeling instantly sick.

“What?” John asked, sincerely puzzled and he crawled closer. “You were in pain, I knew how to help you, so I did.”

Sherlock swallowed thickly and touched his chest, “I…wasn’t aware that—I didn’t know that you were giving me…” he trailed off, unable to finish the sentence and rubbed at his face roughly, pushing back his hair. What did this mean? How did it work? How would this affect him? Had it already affected him?

“It doesn’t do anything,” John told him, having read what Sherlock had been thinking in his features. “Beyond healing and slowing your aging, I mean.” He looked down at his hands. “I… I’ve done it before. She was worried that I’d changed her somehow, but I hadn’t.”

“‘She?’ She who?” Sherlock asked him in sudden curiosity and a spike of emotion that he couldn’t identify.

John smiled wistfully, not looking up, “Mary,” he replied, and when he looked up, Sherlock was surprised to find tears in John’s eyes. “She was my wife. I loved her, but…” His smile faded a little. “She died. She and our daughter.” His eyes lowered to the bed sheets again, fingers clutching at his trousers. “I never got to hold her, never heard her laugh, or cry.” He wiped at his face, brushing the tears from his eyes. “That’s why I went into medicine. I wasn’t going to lose someone I cared about again.”

“You can have offspring?” Shocked at the news, Sherlock walked gently away from the bed and back, growling after a second and waving a hand, wafting the thought away. “It doesn’t matter. – How did she die if you were doing what you did to me? If what you did truly heals and…slows ageing.” He balked at the thought, uncertain what he felt about it, and continued on. “Although whatever you did with her, it wasn’t the same as what you’ve recently done with me, was it? No. You can’t compare them because you weren’t bonded to her like you are with me. This is different. Correct?”

“It’s different in many ways,” John agreed. “The process was the same, but it wasn’t as easy. There was a wall I had to get through to feed her. With us we have a pathway, a connection. And she died by regular means; childbirth. She lost too much blood.”

Humming, Sherlock inclined his head, “Had it been human?” he asked, only considering the fact that it might be insensitive to ask when he’d already done so. Sherlock didn’t take it back and stepped back close to him, vaguely fascinated by the memories that remained compared to the ones that had been lost.

Impactful, painful and emotional memories still seemed to be stuck fast in John’s mind, whilst the weak ones, the mundane ones, had been washed away by years of solitude and torture. It wasn’t exactly uncommon, but interesting nonetheless. John seemed so human, yet was anything but.

“I don’t know what _she_ was,” John replied, glaring up at Sherlock. “I didn’t see. I wasn’t…” He looked away, biting the inside of his cheek. “I wasn’t there. All I saw of her was her grave.”

Sherlock looked him over and then changed the subject, swallowing down more tactless questions, “I don’t want you to do it again,” he told him, sitting back down on the bed, but several inches away from him awkwardly. “Healing me. Don’t do it.”

Sniffing, John rubbed at his eyes again and nodded. When he looked down at his wet fingers, he let out a choked laugh, “You’d have thought I’d have gotten over it, after a hundred years.”

“Yes,” Sherlock replied, though his tone was soft and he felt a sudden, yet brief, relatable clench of sympathy.

John hummed and looked over at Sherlock again, “Get some sleep,” he said, pulling at the duvet he had straightened only minutes before. “You’re exhausted.”

“I’m fine,” Sherlock dismissed. “You can sleep though. If you need it – Did you sleep last night at all? I wasn’t paying attention.”

“You kept asking questions,” John replied as he continued to pull the cover back. “And you’re not fine. You need to sleep.”

Sherlock thumped his hand down on John’s to stop him, “I said, I’m fine.”

John just looked at it for a moment, then covered it softly with his free hand, “It’s just sleep. I won’t go anywhere, I promise.”

Leaning close, Sherlock stared unblinkingly into John’s face, trying to find any trace of deceit, “Say it again,” he ordered.

John blinked in surprise, but then smiled lightly, “I promise you that I will not leave this room.”

Flitting his gaze from John’s brow, eyes, mouth, nose and back again, Sherlock clenched his jaw, “Good,” he whispered, moving away and finally turning his attention to his bed, to the nearest pillow, and shifted to get under the covers without another word, feeling slightly embarrassed by his lack of strength and weak body.

Once he was nicely sprawled under the duvet, the additional weight of John’s body lay down beside him, though it remained above the sheets, and the man sighed in relief, “Sweet dreams, Sherlock.”

Fixated on how pleasurable it had been whenever John had fed, on the way the kiss had felt, on the way John’s breath felt on his throat, his fingers on his chest, John’s heated, hungry gaze locked with his, Sherlock swallowed and clenched his eyes shut in reply.


	2. Chapter 2

**Surfacing** leisurely from sleep, Sherlock turned over with a drawn-out exhale, stirring further when he ended up pushed into the warm skin of a naked back. He frowned, inhaled the scent tickling his nose, and opened his eyes. It took a second for his brain to regain full awareness, but when it did, Sherlock leaned back, looked at the back of John’s nape, and then turned his attention to the windows. Judging by the light outside, it was late, possibly late evening, and Sherlock strained his ears for Steven out of habit alone, as he moved onto his back and sighed.

At the movement, John rubbed his cheek into the pillow he’d been sleeping on with a soft exhale, curling in on himself briefly before stretching out and turning to lie on his front so he could look at Sherlock through sleepy eyes, “Hello,” he muttered, a small smile gracing his features.

“Hello,” Sherlock replied, clearing his throat when his voice came out overly gruff. It was weird to wake up to someone beside him after years of being alone, and even weirder when it was to someone who had been debating killing him not too long ago.

“You sleep well?” John asked, folding his arms around his pillow.

“Must we partake in small talk? It’s tedious and accomplishes nothing,” Sherlock murmured, looking over John’s face and then shrugging. “I slept. That’s enough, isn’t it?”

“Is it?” John asked in reply. “There are good sleeps, and bad ones. Sleeps that leave you revitalised, and ones that leave you exhausted.” He reached over and brushed the tips of his fingers over Sherlock’s shoulder. “You might not ache any more, but that does not mean you had a good sleep.”

Sherlock took up his hand, unclear on exactly why he did so once their fingers touched, and then sat up in the bed, “What does it matter?”

“The days starts when you wake up,” John said, returning his hand to under the pillow so he could look up at Sherlock without rising himself. “And how you wake up determines the day.” He huffed, then turned away with a stretch. “Today is a good day."

Getting out of the bed, Sherlock smoothed out his dressing gown, untwisting it from his legs and rethreading the sash, “If you say so.” He rummaged for his phone to check the time, his messages and emails. “Steven will be going to bed at nine, once he does, you are free to loiter around the living room and kitchen.”

John hummed, rising to sit up on the edge of the bed, “What if I get peckish?”

“Look in the fridge,” Sherlock told him, gripping his phone a little tighter.

“Are the eyeballs up for grabs?” John joked, smirking up at him, but shook his head and stood, extending his arms above his head. “Go on then, go do whatever it is you want to do.”

Sherlock put his phone in his dressing gown pocket, “I’m not leaving the flat.”

“But you are leaving me,” John retorted, looking over his shoulder as he picked up the laptop. “I can’t leave the room yet, remember? Go on, enjoy your freedom. I’ve got some catching up to do.”

Scoffing in response, Sherlock moved and sat down in a nearby chair, pressing his fingers together under his chin, “I’m scarcely free.”

John gave him a roll of his eyes and sat next to the wall as he had done the day before and booted up the laptop, “You have periods of boredom you refuse to fill with anything productive. I think that’s free enough.”

“How would you know what I do or don’t do with my time?” Sherlock sniped, looking away and glaring into the distance. “You don’t know me. Don’t act like you do. We might be bonded, but that doesn’t mean that you know all there is to know about me.”

“I saw how worn that sofa was,” John replied with a smirk and looked down at the laptop, typing something painfully slowly. “How much time do you spend on it when you’re… wherever you go?”

“You think just because I don’t dart around like some, useless and restless, buzzing Gnat, that I’m not doing anything productive?” Sherlock scoffed. “Compared to many, everything I do is important. Everything I do is relevant. Everything I do serves a purpose, not just for me, but for others.”

“Is that what people call it these days?” John asked, hitting the enter key with a feeling of finality and looking up at Sherlock, folding his arms. “Was it research? A means to gain access to certain circles?”

Sherlock narrowed his eyes and then turned them fully on John, “Whatever happened to ‘Go on, enjoy your freedom. I’ve got some catching up to do?’” he asked curtly. “Why are you asking me stupid questions?”

“You’re the one who decided to stay,” John replied, pulling a box from nearby closer to him. “Like I said before, ‘I can be curious when the mood strikes’.” He opened the lid and looked inside, only for his eyebrows to rise under his messy fringe. “You have a skull?”

“He’s a friend,” Sherlock intoned with a huff. “Why would I go anywhere? I have nowhere else to be.” He glared in the general direction of where he knew Steven to be. He knew the man’s routine inside out and front to back. No matter how many times he deleted it, he continually relearned it, as the man always did the same thing day in and day out.

“I thought you said you didn’t have any friends,” John replied, pulling the skull from the box and holding it out in front of him, looking deep into the eye sockets. “Did you rescue him from an undeserving lab somewhere?”

“I was being sarcastic,” Sherlock muttered, watching how John’s fingers clasped the delicate slopes and curves of bone. “And no, I did not.”

“Well I think he must hate it in the box,” John said, then stood up, carefully putting it on the chest of drawers. He stepped back and cupped his chin in thought. “Hm, no. It’s not quite right.” He looked around the room, but eventually sighed. “Maybe the desk?” He moved the skull again, brushing against Sherlock’s shoulder as he went by him and placed the skull on top of the pile of books. When he stepped back again, he shook his head. “It still doesn’t feel right.”

“He belongs on the mantel,” Sherlock whispered, clenching his jaw and grinding his teeth.

“Then why isn’t he?” John asked him, but then his eyes hardened. “It’s Steven, isn’t it?” He approached Sherlock and knelt at his feet. “What has he done? Has his simple mind spoiled your work?” He leaned forward, hands falling on either side of the chair, arms constantly brushing Sherlock’s sides. “Should we punish him?”

Sherlock felt something dark, something eager and hot and writhing, flutter and flare at John’s words, and he smirked, almost agreeing, almost leaning forward toward him in enthusiasm, “People…don’t like human skulls as decorations,” he forced himself to utter. “Mrs Hudson isn’t a fan of him either. So I keep him here. Least he be taken or thrown out.”

“But you aren’t people,” John pointed out with an answering smirk. “This is your home, and you’re hiding away pieces of your life in boxes. It should be on display, for the whole world to wonder at. To envy.”

“Stop it,” Sherlock whispered quietly, looking between John’s eyes and mouth.

“But you are a genius, Sherlock,” John told him, leaning closer. “You’re a genius, trapped in a box by idiots like him. Why let them keep you caged when you can be free?”

Sherlock inhaled deeply, trying to confine the abrupt unfurling of arrogant whispers and dark, potent desire within him, “I can’t be free,” he heard himself breathing to John, almost inaudibly. “Just like you can’t. – Whether here, out there, or in a small, cold cell. No one is free. Freedom is an illusion. A mocking trick.”

John reached up and caressed Sherlock’s cheek, “Then why not make the illusion to your liking?”

“…Steven will move out. He has to. He needs to,” Sherlock told him and turned his eyes at the wall, feeling like he could see through it to the man in question, who would be sat in front of the television with his poorly cooked dinner.

“He wants to,” John said, leaning closer again so he was whispering into Sherlock’s ear. “He just needs that final push.”

Sherlock let his eyes lid, drowning in John’s energy and scent, and grinned slowly, “Yes,” he agreed, an idea forming in the back of his mind.

John’s thumb brushed over Sherlock’s chin as his nose touched his temple, “You’ll finally be able to do what you want.”

“Yes,” Sherlock replied instantly in a fervent hiss through his teeth. He blinked, finding his grin widening enough to bring an ache to his cheeks, and wiped it from his face quickly. “To the flat, yes.”

“It’s your home,” John soothed, his other hand rising along Sherlock’s side before finally coming to rest on his shoulder. “The one place you can truly be yourself. Your kingdom to rule, your land to mould.”

“Ours,” he said quietly, looking away at his response and then shifting in the chair, clearing his throat to raise his voice. “Stop. – For now, until Steven is gone, my things will remain in here, where they are safe.”

John blinked at him in surprise. “Ours,” he repeated quietly, then gave him a look of pure joy and pulled away, walking over to the box again, ignoring the laptop, which was still whirring away on the floor, and bringing it over to Sherlock. “You have so much sheet music,” he said, pulling out several pages of The Four Seasons.

Sherlock watched him do so, puzzled and surprised at the abrupt change and movement, “Yes?” he asked.

“I used to play,” John said, not looking up from the pages. “I… I don’t remember what I played, but I can remember it was a wind instrument of some sort.” He pulled out a copy of Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet and hummed. “Dance of the Knights.”

“…I play the violin,” Sherlock told him and then shot a glance toward his bed, where his instrument and its stand lay beneath. “It sometimes helps me to think.”

“Music is the language of the heart,” John murmured, as though reciting a half-forgotten phrase, then looked up at Sherlock with a grin. “I bet you play beautifully.”

Sherlock flushed and pursed his mouth, sitting up straight with a gradual extension of his spine, “I haven’t played for a while,” he muttered.

John frowned at that, and looked back down at the box of music again, “As soon as he’s gone. When he’s finally out and you can be yourself again.”

“I am myself,” Sherlock insisted. “I play when I wish. I merely have not wished to play. I find I haven’t needed to play. That I can focus and concentrate and think, without it.”

John just gave him a look that told him he hadn’t believed a word he had just said, and continued leafing through the music, “Do you have a favourite piece?”

“Must you snoop?” Sherlock replied irritably, reaching out to grab his wrist. “I thought you wished to catch up on world affairs over the last three years?”

“You could easily give me a summary any time you wanted,” John replied, allowing himself to be caught. “I have time to look at all of that. It’s not every day I get to see parts of my Master’s life.”

A fizz shot through Sherlock’s body and he rolled his eyes, “Stop that. – And I can’t give you a summary. Not on everything. I delete what isn’t important.”

John shrugged, “The internet does not have a time limit, Sherlock.”

“No, but my patience does.” Sherlock let John’s wrist go, finding it equally both annoying and fascinating why he did so as slowly as he did. “I’d rather you get it out of the way now, so we may move on to more important things.”

“Oh? Like what?” John asked, moving back to the laptop.

“Will you fall in love again?” Sherlock retorted, almost immediately, after he’d thought of what he needed to do. “You had a wife once upon a time, will you…seek another?” He gestured offhandedly as he sat back and turned his gaze away, keeping John in his peripheral. “You have been given a new life. I may allow you to do whatever you please in time – If you wished to be tedious and work as a GP and deal with the mundane, boring, stupid people of London, then you can do that. I’d find it a waste of time but I’d not exactly stop you. Especially if you can be trusted not to leave a path of husks in your wake.” The grin was back and Sherlock forced it away.

“I didn’t do that,” John told him with an offended frown. “I wasn’t… That’s not what I did. And I can’t tell you if I’ll fall in love again or not. I can’t choose who I fall in love with, it just happens.”

“Fine. I will rephrase,” Sherlock said in a long breath through his nose. “If you fall in love again…will you leave?”

John tilted his head, silent for several long moments as he thought, “… I couldn’t say,” he eventually answered. “I don’t know what my life will be like when that happens, but I can’t leave. Not yet.”

Sherlock inclined his head and brushed idly at his knee, “Fair,” he murmured, glancing at John. He didn’t know what to make of him. He didn’t know a lot of things with him. He hated not knowing whilst simultaneously he relished it. It wasn’t often Sherlock didn’t know something, that he was lost for words, uncertain and confused, and when he was, it angered him, scared him, and intrigued him. To know that seemingly unknown was forever a goal for him. To combine theories and facts, to solve a problem and create a solution. What was the solution here?

“What are you thinking?” John asked, the laptop now set up on his knees and the light reflecting in his eyes. He was still looking at the screen, but his body language showed that his attention was still on Sherlock.

“…Many things.” Sherlock answered after a brief silence. “I am never not thinking, John.”

“Surface thoughts then,” John replied, smiling at the screen and clicking on something, eyes moving across hundreds of images and words as he scrolled and clicked and typed away.

Sherlock watched him, fascinated and enthralled, and then twisted slightly to him, “If you had killed me, would you have felt guilt? Would you have…thought about me? Did you think about the others?” He squinted at him. “And would you have killed me if I hadn’t have bonded us first?”

John paused, his fingers falling still and his eyes losing focus as he transported himself back to the cell, “I think… Yes. I think I might have.” He closed his eyes, head bowing. “I was so, so hungry. I… I would have hated it, taking it from you, but you smell so good and…” He breathed in quickly, covering his mouth with his hand. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to. I wasn’t like this before. This wasn’t me.”

Turning away, Sherlock looked aside, and then over at his bedroom door, knowing without seeing that Steven was cleaning up, “You said Steven was tasteless,” he muttered, changing the subject slightly yet again. “Would you not…enjoy him?” He turned back to John. “I’m not suggesting anything. Merely curious. – How far from someone must you be before you can smell them, before you know how…flavoursome they would taste?”

Scrubbing his hand over his face, John took a calming breath and leaned his head back against the wall, eyes still closed, “Within about ten feet,” he answered.

“Is there a big difference in flavour, texture, power or heat in a moral and immoral ‘soul?’” he asked, raking his eyes over John.

John smirked, one of his eyes opening to look at Sherlock, “Yes.”

“Which tastes better?” Sherlock asked with a rush of adrenaline.

John leaned forward again, resting his chin in his hands as he met Sherlock’s gaze, “Immoral.”

Sherlock tilted his head, “Which one am I?” he whispered, heart pounding in his chest, in his neck, in his ears, and in his temples.

Tilting his head to the side, John hummed, “Guilt taints the ‘soul’, not the act itself,” he explained. “Immoral people rarely feel guilt, so they tend to be less rotten, as do Righteous people. Moral people might do the right thing, but even the barest of mistakes tears them apart on the inside. But people in the middle…” He grinned.

“Hm.” Sherlock regarded him closely and turned his mind onto something else. “You mentioned before about merely having ‘a bite,’ how small is that? – I assume you can decide whether to take it all or take a little. How little is a little? And do you have to do the same as you did before to get at it? Touch them, put your mouth to theirs…invade their space…” Sherlock remembered John indulging himself, remembered the bright, wispy spiral of a thing disappearing into John’s mouth and down his throat, remembered the wilted shell of a corpse left behind, and felt the door in his mind vibrate with a cackle.

John chuckled lightly, “So many questions!”

“Which need many answers,” Sherlock replied, lifting his brows. “Or don’t you have the answers? Don’t you remember what it’s like to take a little?”

“I can remember I did,” John replied with a shrug. “I just had to kiss someone, on the hand, or the cheek. I don’t remember what it was like, but that was how I did it.”

“Hm. You need your mouth to make contact,” Sherlock murmured.

“I don’t just take things with a touch,” John said with a roll of his eyes.

“I didn’t say that,” Sherlock countered, “but you are suggesting that you need to touch the victim in some way. You cannot just…snack from afar…or can you? Can you take, suck, and consume a ‘soul’ a few feet or so away?”

“No,” John replied, and he sat up, turning back to the laptop again. “I must be in contact with a person. It’s not like you can eat without putting it in your mouth, can you?” He huffed, giving Sherlock a look. “Why did you save me?”

“You are not human. You don’t eat the same as humans do. Not when it comes to your main food source. Therefore the question was not an unjust one and does not deserve your satirical reply,” Sherlock said, deliberately ignoring John’s question. “You take a person’s entire self. Sucking them dry until their body disintegrates and collapses into itself like a carton of juice. And I merely wished to know if you can do this in various ways.” Sherlock crossed his legs and smiled derisively at John. “Though I am glad to know your limitations, I am a little…disappointed and annoyed to know them. It means more work for me. It means that if I am to let you feed, I must find a way for you to do so without causing panic or suspicion or hysteria.”

“A task you wouldn’t have had to put yourself through if you hadn’t rescued me,” John said, intent on getting an answer. “You don’t even have to feed me. You could let me waste away. I could have in that cell. But you rescued me. Why? Why did you do it?”

“Yes, because leaving you there, to be discovered by either the police or some member of the public, is a grand idea! – Even if I had walked away and not notified anyone, those idiots would have slipped up at some point. They would have been found out. And alongside them being revealed and apprehended, you would be. And you would have been more unstable than you are right now.” Sherlock sneered. “How could I leave you? How could I continue to let you kill people that those morons threw to you? How could I, logically and in good conscience, leave you where others may find you? To allow you to be discovered? You shake the very foundations of existence, John! You bring more questions than answers. You bring fear and terror. You are living, walking proof of a side of life that so, so many would find horrifying. You prove the presence of magic. Magic, John! Of unknown, powerful, immortal creatures. Of things right out of a collective nightmare – And if the government got involved, if you were instead taken and hidden and used, it would be just as horrifying. You are a weapon. In the wrong hands, you mean nothing but death and destruction.” Sherlock took a breath and looked down his nose at John, clenching his jaw and swallowing. “Perhaps I should have killed you, like I mentioned before. Instead of letting you out, binding us, I should have destroyed you. I still could. I could get rid of you… I should get rid of you. You are not stable. It would be rational for me to kill you. Better. Safer…”

“Then why don’t you?” John asked him, eyes hard, but a hint of fear and hope flitting across his face. “I won’t stop you.”

“Won’t you?” Sherlock asked in reply.

“Does it matter?” John asked, tilting his head to the side. “If you really wanted it, I wouldn’t be able to.”

“How do you know?” Sherlock huffed. “What makes you say that?”

“Because I already have to fight to do what I want, and not what you want me to do,” John replied, looking down at the laptop again. “It whispers in my head, like a song stuck on loop.” He rubbed at his left ear.

Sherlock observed the movement with vague interest, “I’ve not told you to do much of anything yet. Only a few things, things in which you seem quite capable of disobeying. You’ve all but done what you wanted regardless of what I’ve said.” He stood up, pacing by the bed a moment before twisting to John in frustration. “This bond. This…magic. It’s…it’s befuddling and confusing and has no set rules. None that make sense. Mainly because none of this makes sense!” Sherlock threw his hands up. “The incantation…it spoke of control, of a bind, of order, of containment, but that is all. The rest I have yet to translate, so I don’t know what this does or what is right and what is wrong. If things happened that weren’t meant to happen, I wouldn’t know about it. – I hate that, but it’s the truth.”

“Those spells, they were blood magic,” John replied. “It’s never the same spell twice. Blood magic has always been unstable.”

“Conveniently remember that do you?” Sherlock suddenly spat, turning his back on John and taking several deep breaths, calming and pushing at the abrupt rising panic. Suspicious and angry over John’s inconsistent and frustrating, so-called, memory lapses. “You knew nothing of the symbols, of the spell or ritual that kept you in the cell. I know more than you currently. So you can’t tell me, you can’t guarantee, that you wouldn’t be able to stop me from killing you if I chose to do so.” He glanced down at his chest without moving his head and fought hard to stop himself from reaching up and touching the mark beneath his shirt. “There is something. What I did has done something. We are, indeed, connected. You didn’t kill me…and I didn’t kill you…and…though I possibly should have done and should probably do now, I won’t. – Especially not after all the effort I just went through to give you an identity.”

John relaxed minutely at the confession, “… Thank you,” he muttered, looking down at his hands.

Glancing around at him, Sherlock sighed quietly, “You’re welcome.”

Smiling softly up at him, John shifted the laptop again and started to scroll through more pages, “Can you really identify an airline pilot from their left thumb?”

“Yes,” Sherlock replied with a proud, arrogant lift of his mouth.

“And a software designer from his tie?”

“And a cult member by the state of their nails, apparently,” Sherlock said with a soft laugh. “Impressed are you?”

“How is that even possible?” John asked in lieu of an answer.

Sherlock folded his arms and faced John again, “You’re asking stupid questions again,” he told him. “You know how. You did it to me – Don’t think I’ve forgotten how easily you deduced that I was a detective of sorts. Nor the fact that you figured out I often occupy the sofa when I’m thinking.”

John chuckled, “Fine. I know how it’s possible, but I haven’t seen anyone as young as you manage it.” He frowned. “I don’t think so anyway.”

“Hm.” Sherlock smiled at him slightly and then stiffened when Steven laughed heartily at something on the television. His laugh was like fingernails on a chalkboard.

John looked at the door in irritation, “You sure we can’t make him leave sooner?”

“I thought the eyeballs would have been the final straw to be completely honest,” Sherlock muttered. “I made sure they were human too. Just for that added flare.” He smirked and rubbed at his chin and lower lip.

“You often leave body parts in the fridge then?” John asked with a smirk. “Maybe a human head would do it. Or just the brain. Brains freak people out for some reason.”

“True.” Sherlock looked John over and then sat back down on the chair. “And yes. I sometimes bring things home. I prefer my own personal little lab rather than those in Bart’s – Sometimes I use their equipment, of course, but it’s not always appreciated. I’m not always wanted.” He thought of Molly and her shy smile and big eyes. “Or I’m wanted a bit too much.” He exhaled loudly. “I just want to be left to experiment. To work. How else am I to solve the problems put to me if I do not work through the equation?”

“They forget that answers cannot always be found through ‘easy’ or ‘safe’ methods,” John replied, clicking on something on the computer screen. “Health and Safety has ruined curiosity.”

“I know,” Sherlock agreed with another exhale, slumping down in his chair, briefly forgetting that John was what he was. “I have to suffer because of other people’s stupid mistakes. It’s not fair.”

John hummed, typing a little more and clicking on several links. After several minutes of silence, he rose from his seat by the wall and shifted over so that he was leaning against Sherlock’s chair, his head level with the armrest.

Sherlock looked down at him and then, with a sudden urge he couldn’t seem to ignore, he ran the very tips of his fingers over John’s hair, eyes running over the scar on his chest and shoulder, “Perhaps we should experiment?”

With a relaxed sigh, John propped his head back against the chair, his eyes closed as his own fingers rose to meet Sherlock’s, “What did you have in mind?”

“I want to order you about a bit,” Sherlock replied. “See what this bond does first hand and how and why – I will know more when I translate the books but…for now, why not find some things out with some experimentation.”

John snorted, “You’re going to have me running about like some headless chicken?”

“Yes,” Sherlock said. “Obviously – Hm. Now, what to have you do…?”

“Hop-scotch across the room?” John suggested with a quirk of his lip.

“It’s got to be something you would overly dislike. Something which you’d only do if forced, and forced hard,” Sherlock murmured, playing with the soft strands of John’s hair absentmindedly, until he caught himself doing so and stopped.

John blinked up at him and gritted his teeth, “Right.”

Sherlock smirked at him, smugly lifting one eyebrow, “Otherwise how else would I know that it’s worked. If it’s something you wouldn’t mind doing, then what’s the point?”

John hummed in reluctant agreement, and pulled away, setting the laptop to the side to sit on the bed, facing Sherlock, “What would you have me do, Master?” he asked almost mockingly.

“Don’t be like that,” Sherlock huffed in amusement, leaning his elbow on the chair armrest as he gazed thoughtfully at John, trying to think of something to make him do, but something which wouldn’t cause much of a scene.

John just shrugged and pulled his feet up to cross his legs in front of his chest.

“We’ll start easy,” Sherlock told him and flicked a glance at his bedroom door. “Give Steven…a kiss.” He shot John a meaningful look. “Like the one you gave me.”

John blanched, his eye twitching, “That’s revolting.”

“Yes,” Sherlock agreed, locking gazes with John and hardening his tone. “Do it.”

John's entire body twitched, but he ducked and shook his head, "No."

“Yes. Go. Now,” Sherlock told him. “I want you to.” Sherlock grinned and leaned forward. “I order you.”

John whimpered, his hands coming up to cover his ears, but at Sherlock's last words, the scarring over his chest and shoulder throbbed red, and John went lax, looking up at Sherlock with a dazed look, "Yes," he whispered, and rose from the bed, walking over to the door.

Sherlock blinked widely and stumbled to follow, tripping over his feet a little and blocking the door for a second, trying to peer at his face to see if John was only acting. He waved a hand in front of John’s eyes and bent in close, moving his attention between the mark etched onto John’s skin and his eyes.

John blinked slowly, looking up at Sherlock almost sightlessly, and frowned. He blinked rapidly and then stepped back, shaking his head and bringing his hands up to press against his brow, "No. No, I..."

Sherlock watched him and tilted his head, “What was it that made you? Tell me. I need to know.” John just moaned, clutching at his hair, eyes shut tight. Losing his patience, Sherlock grabbed him by the shoulder, “Tell me!” he demanded.

"Make it stop," John rasped, looking up at Sherlock with tears in his eyes. "Please, make it stop."

“Make what stop? Tell me what you feel? Tell me what it does to you? – Tell me which part of what I said got to you and made you obey?” Sherlock said, keeping a grip on John’s shoulder. “I need to know. And then I’ll try and make it stop…”

"A soldier must follow orders," he said, a demented smile forming, cracking his lips apart. "Follow orders. Or the soldier will be punished. Lightening and thunder. Drums, drums, drums." He giggled. "Good soldiers follow orders."

Sherlock frowned at him and recoiled back, before shaking him, “Stop that.”

John's giggles faded, but remained as an almost buzzing, until it morphed into tears, "Make it go away. Too loud. It's too loud."

Uneasy and uncertain, Sherlock looked around, pushed John back, shook him by the shoulder again and then gripped his face, “I retract my earlier order. Do you hear? I take it back. I don’t want you to kiss Steven. I don’t want it. I don’t want you to kiss him.” Increasing his grasp on John’s head, Sherlock pulled him close. “That’s an order!”

The scar flashed once again, and then John sighed, collapsing against Sherlock with a sigh and a sob.

Grunting as he caught him, Sherlock heaved him up and aside, dropping him on the side of the bed, “So it’s just that? I have to order you? I have to say it’s an order for it to work?” he asked John.

John curled up and clutched at the bed sheets, shivering, "Please, don't do that again."

“I order you to stand up,” Sherlock told him, almost talking over John’s low voice, overcome with fascination as his thoughts whirled in a torrent.

Shivering, John’s shoulder gave a weak glow, and he once again relaxed, sliding from the bed and standing straight in front of Sherlock, dazed eyes fixed on the wall.

Sherlock looked him over and touched John’s chest, his shoulder, running his fingers over the marking whilst peering into John’s seemingly vacant stare, “Interesting,” he whispered, pointing aside and trying to demand him without saying so. “Sit in my chair.”

John shifted his gaze to look into Sherlock's eyes, and blinked, intelligence seeping back into his own, "Is that an order?"

“You tell me,” Sherlock replied quietly as he walked to the books he’d brought with him, skimming through to the binding incantation to try and work out what else was said.

John remained silent, but soon sat himself down in the chair, his muscles shaking and twitching slightly, his back ram-rod straight.

“Mm – Did you do that because you wanted to or because you felt like you had to? What’s the difference between that and…earlier? With the kiss order?” Sherlock asked him, feeling a dangerous spark and sizzle of power that made his heart skip and his chest warm.

"... It was the difference between being pushed and being towed," John explained quietly, slowly.

“Is there more power behind it if I use the word ‘order?’” he asked John next, sliding his eyes over to him.

John folded in on himself and nodded.

“Noted,” Sherlock huffed with intrigue, skimming over the symbols and markings in the book in front of him for a moment. When he looked back at John he scowled half-heartedly. “It can’t have been that bad, surely. I could have ordered you to do much worse, meaning it would have been worse for you if you didn’t do it or tried to fight it.”

John scowled up at him, gripping at his knees, "Oh no, not bad at all," he growled. "I was only forced to do something against my will that I could barely even think against."

“Oh boo-hoo,” Sherlock scoffed. “For what? Two minutes? Three? – What did you think was going to happen? What did you expect? Pleasurable tickles? – You agreed. Yes, I could have done it anyway, or made you agree, but I didn’t, did I? And I stopped you before you did anything.” He smiled at him slowly, though the smile was empty. “‘Answers cannot always be found through ‘easy’ or ‘safe’ methods,’ John.”

John continued to glare at him for several moments, but then, between shivers and twitches, he chuckled, a wry grin returning, "You're good."

Sherlock stepped over to him, hesitated a second, and then rested his hand on the scarring across John’s shoulder, “I will need to do further…experimentation,” he told him. “This… trembling. It’s annoying. I’d like to know how to turn the control on you off as well as on.” He tilted his head. “Unless I just need to withdraw my order verbally to stop it. As that’s sort of what happened before.” He leaned down to him, invading John’s personal space and being bombarded by his scent and heat. “In which case, I retract all orders, John.”

With one last shiver, John sighed, his eyes falling shut as his head lolled onto Sherlock's shoulder. His muscles quaked briefly, hand flying up to grasp at Sherlock's hand, and then he completely relaxed, though his muscles gave an occasional twitch. "Thank you," he whispered.

Steven laughed again in the background and Sherlock seemed incapable of stopping the sudden moment he began imagining the man sucked dry under John’s mouth and hands, “You’re welcome,” he rumbled in reply.

John clutched at Sherlock's shirt, turning his head to glance at the door, then back into Sherlock's shoulder, breathing long and careful breaths, "He has to go."

“I don’t think Mrs Hudson even likes him, you know,” Sherlock told John, peeking down at him from under his lashes subtly. “She loves you though…”

"Does she?" John asked, a smirk evident in his voice.

Rolling his eyes, Sherlock straightened up, pulling away from John and shooting him a half-hearted glare, “You’re a good actor,” he said in reply.

John looked up at him with a sad smile, "Being myself scares people," he said.

“You can’t know that. Now, help me think of a way to get rid of the pest in the living room.” Gesturing with his chin, Sherlock slowly began to pace, stepping up to the mirror on his wardrobe to look at both his own reflection, and John’s. “It would be best if it didn’t involve you, but…at the same time…perhaps it should – Steven thinks you’re my lover, and he’s disgusted by the fact. I suppose we could use that to our advantage.”

John scoffed, "Homophobic dick on top of an unappreciative idiot?" he asked, pushing himself up from the chair and joining him in front of the mirror.

“Afraid so,” Sherlock told him with a sigh. “It’s quite tiresome.”

"Hm." John tilted his head to the side, looking the both of them over from head to toe, then turned to Sherlock and pulled at his shirt, untucking it from his trousers and undoing several buttons - redoing a few in the wrong order - and running his hands through Sherlock's hair.

“…You think I’d be this sloppy?” Sherlock huffed in complaint, blowing several wild, bouncing coils from his eyes.

"No," John replied, focused on messing up Sherlock's hair as much as possible. "But this isn't about the truth. This is about getting rid of odious flat mates." He stepped back, gave Sherlock a once over, and nodded. "That should work."

Sherlock glanced at himself in the mirror, taking in the mussed state of his clothes and the wild tangle that was his hair, and grimaced, “I look ridiculous…” He tugged on his shirt when he found the mark on his chest peeking through the haphazardly done up buttons, and pushed a hand out to ruffle John’s hair in childish retaliation.

John chuckled, but let Sherlock mess his hair up, “You look like you’ve just woken up after having sex,” he replied with a grin. “And now, so do I.”

“Mm.” Sherlock smiled in return and glanced back at his reflection. “If you say so.”

“Come on,” John said, grasping hold of his hand. “Let’s go make out like teenagers while foraging for food.” With that, he started to pull Sherlock towards the bedroom door again.

“What exactly have you been looking at on the Internet?” Sherlock said under his breath, allowing John to tug him, suddenly entranced by John’s hand wrapped around his for reasons unknown. He couldn’t remember the last time someone had held his hand. Mrs Hudson cupped and clasped and patted his hand. Molly tried to brush her fingers against it. Lestrade shook it. No one had held it in years.

Shaking the thoughts away with a glare, Sherlock cringed as Steven’s next laugh rang in his ears, crisper and louder with the barrier of his bedroom taken away, and he clenched his jaw, following John down the short hallway to the kitchen.

“Stuff,” John smirked, and led him into the kitchen, ignoring Steven as he pushed Sherlock up against the kitchen table, staring up into his eyes as though they held the answer to the meaning of life. His free hand gripped at Sherlock’s hip, and wandered up, under his shirt, before coming to rest behind Sherlock’s neck so he could pull Sherlock close and give him a long, invasive kiss.

Sherlock, through his lashes and around John’s tilted head, could see Steven stiffen up in his chair; all amusement gone from his face. Replaced with deep etches of angered aversion. The sight almost made Sherlock laugh with a huff of provocation, but he kept it back. Instead, Sherlock looped his arms around John, bringing him in tight and firm against his body, and spread one of his hands down over John’s backside.

“Oi!” Steven exclaimed in outrage, standing ramrod straight.

Pulling back, John gave Sherlock a wink, then turned to face Steven with a look of surprise and a little embarrassment etched onto his face, “Oh God,” he said, “I didn’t know you were… Jesus, I’m sorry.” He smirked, rubbing the back of his head and messing up his hair even more. “Just came in for a bite and… Well, distractions happen.”

“I thought you would have left by now,” Steven said to him, giving John a tight and nasty sort of smile. “I thought ‘it was a one time thing?’” He had directed the question to Sherlock, but Sherlock snubbed him, keeping his eyes on John’s face and his arms around him. “Sherlock?”

He shot a lewd and condescending grin Steven’s way, “It was a one time thing, thrice.”

Steven frowned for a moment and then paled and curled his lip, “I told you that—”

“Actually,” Sherlock interrupted, “scrap that, because it doesn’t technically count as more than once if you’ve not stopped the encounter. You know, as in, if it’s still going on. So, yes, what I said is correct. One time thing.” He turned his grin to John, changing it to something more cheeky and suggestive. “You’re fine with that, right?”

“If it continues being this fun, I don’t see anything wrong with it at all,” John replied with a grin, lacing his fingers with Sherlock’s and giving him a kiss on the cheek. “But I’m hungry. You said you had food.”

“Disgusting,” Steven uttered, loud enough for Sherlock to hear, before he took a breath. “If you’re hungry, why don’t you go home, Doctor?”

“Why would he do that when there’s a perfectly good fridge with food—?”

“My food,” Steven growled angrily. “It all belongs to me. I do the food shopping! –You’re lucky I let you have that toast this morning!”

“So you’d rather let Sherlock starve than allow him a few slices of toast?” John asked him, shocked. “What kind of a flat mate wouldn’t share their food?”

“Three months, it’s been. Three whole months, and not once has Sherlock contributed to the food money,” Steven replied.

“Four,” Sherlock corrected. “Four months.”

John huffed and turned back to Sherlock, “Now why would you go and do a thing like that? That’s hardly fair.” He gave Steven an apologetic look. “I’ll pay for what I use, I promise. It’s really just a snack to tide us over.”

“No. Go home,” Steven told him.

“You can’t kick him out,” Sherlock snorted, unflinching when Steven made toward them.

“Yes. Yes, I can, Sherlock.”

“No you can’t.” Sherlock replied, leaning back on the table with one elbow arrogantly. “This is my flat too. You can’t just—”

Steven glared at John, “If you don’t leave, right this second, I’ll call the police.”

John scoffed and folded his arms, “And on what pretext will you get them to come?”

“You’re basically trespassing,” Steven replied with an edge to his tone, glaring at them both.

John raised a brow at him, and took a step towards him, and out of Sherlock’s arms, “I have been invited to stay here by one of the lease owners. I have the approval of the landowner. That is not trespassing.” He kept his arms folded, unthreatening yet still intimidating. “But this isn’t about food, is it? This is because of your insecurities.”

Steven balked and recoiled as if burnt, and Sherlock let his mouth curl up, “I’m not insecure,” he shot back harshly with a growl.

“Oh no, of course not,” John agreed sarcastically. “You just hate homosexuality because it opens up the gene pool to people like you.”

“You’re freaks of nature!” he spat and Sherlock both found the phrase cliché and irritating. Could they think of nothing else to say? “It’s repulsive what you do, what you are! You should be destroyed at birth! You’re perverted! – Bunch of faggots.”

John’s eyes narrowed dangerously at the last word, and he closed the distance between him and his aggressor, being very careful not to touch him, “So there it is,” he said, almost hissing through his teeth, “that underlying bullshit I’ve heard a thousand times before. Who was it? Your father? Did he leave your family for a man, is that it? Or maybe you had a crush on that boy that everyone liked back in school. Did he reject you in front of everyone? Did he fuck you and leave you?”

Sherlock blinked and then frowned with a flash of realisation, “It’s me,” he muttered and straightened up, looking at Steven as the man avoided all eye contact and went a deep red in the face. Sherlock laughed in disbelief and shook his head, surprised and annoyed that he’d not seen it sooner. How had he not seen it?

“Fuck you,” Steven snarled at them both, heading out of the living room in a rage, his fists clenched at his side. “I’m not a fucking queer!”

John waited, listening for the bedroom door to slam, before turning to Sherlock and finally allowing himself to laugh, “Oh my God!”

“Well, that’s him gone then,” Sherlock said, looking up at the thump or two of footsteps. “He won’t stay around after that. Definitely not.” He shot John a wide amused smirk and shrugged.

John grinned in return, still chuckling, and moved to lean next to Sherlock, “I can’t believe he has a crush on you.”

“Thanks a lot,” Sherlock replied playfully and glanced aside. “There’s always something I don’t see. I don’t get. – This was definitely one of them, because I was really not expecting that. At all.”

“I wasn’t either,” John agreed, and gave Sherlock a little nudge before heading over to the fridge. “You hungry?”

“No,” Sherlock replied before he fully gave it a thought and then gave in with a tilt of his head. “Yes.”

John chuckled and opened the fridge, looking around inside. A few moments later, he had set some eggs on the side, along with some cheese, bacon, an onion, and a jar of eyes. “How does omelette sound?” he asked, searching the cupboards for a saucepan and oil. “I think I can remember how to make it.”

“Sounds perfect.” Sherlock watched him and then sat down at the table, pushing back his hair, ruffling it and then re-buttoning his shirt, tucking it into his trousers.

Pulling the pan out from one of the cupboards, along with a grater and cutting board, John quickly retrieved a knife from the block and proceeded to prepare the meal. “I apologise if it ends up a bit burnt,” he said as he started to slice and peel the onion.

“I’m not fussy,” Sherlock told him. “Perhaps I’ll even let you cook all our meals, so you can get some good practice in.”

John chuckled, “Only if you cook once a week,” he replied. “Or at least pay for the take aways.”

“Deal,” Sherlock nodded and sat back, finding it nonsensical, amazing and unbelievable that he was where he currently was.

He wondered, only briefly, what it would have been like if he hadn’t have ended up in the cell with John, and tried to decide which path he preferred. The current path was overgrown, cracked, rickety, uneven and dangerous, with the destination ahead, obscured in the far, far stretching distance. Sherlock looked at the mark on John’s shoulder again, touched his chest, and looked off out of the living room window.

The city was busy, much as it always was, with people going about their mindless lives, doing mundane things and thinking boring thoughts. They all had plans, places they wanted to reach, and yet it all felt so obscure to him. Especially now with John so connected to him.

The pan sizzled and popped as the onions and bacon cooked in the oil, releasing their fumes into the air while John hummed something – a tune that had lost its melody – in time with his beating of the eggs.

“If…you’re going to come with me on cases,” Sherlock said abruptly, keeping his gaze locked onto the window, “then we need to discuss a few things. You need to know a few things. Two things specifically – Or rather, two people. One of which I’m glad has not noticed you’d come home with me.”

John looked over his shoulder, curious, “Two people?”

Sherlock turned to him, crossing one leg over the other and slowly clasped his hands together, “There are several reasons I did what I did last night, when I made sure to create an identity for you. Two of them were because of these two people. Though more one than the other,” he started, pursing his mouth in thought. “In normal circumstances, this wouldn’t matter. I wouldn’t rightly care if they looked into you or met you, but, as you know, these aren’t normal circumstances and…you aren’t a normal human. You’re not human at all.” Sitting forward slightly, Sherlock tried to decide where to begin. “One person is a policemen. A Detective Inspector. He gives me a large majority of my cases. You’ll no doubt meet him first.”

John nodded slowly, depositing half of the grated cheese into the eggs and stirring again, “And the other?”

“The other…is my brother,” Sherlock muttered.

John turned around at that with a smile, “You have a brother?” he asked. “What’s his name?”

“The fact I have a brother is not something to smile about, John. Believe me,” Sherlock informed him. “His name is Mycroft. He’s seven years my senior. And a pain in my arse – He is the biggest issue we have to face. He has eyes and ears practically everywhere in this country. Essentially he’s the British Government. That’s how much power and reach he has. He has his thick, greedy fingers in all of the pies.”

John nodded slowly, his smile falling from his face, “So, that’s why you were so thorough last night. With all the documents and stuff.”

“Yes. It takes a lot to fool him. I needed to be sure. I needed to have it so you weren’t found out to be…no one. It would be awfully difficult to talk your way out of that,” Sherlock said. “Everything needs to be perfect and correct. I needed to make sure that once Mycroft learnt about you – which he might be in the process of doing already – that there would be nothing incriminating and suspicious about you. Nothing too difficult to explain at any rate.”

“… I see,” John said, biting his lip, only to jump to the pan when it started sizzling too much, stirring the contents before dumping the egg and cheese over it. “Damn it. Might be burnt after all.” He turned on the oven quickly, making sure the egg didn’t burn as well.

“I’ll eat it anyway,” Sherlock assured him and turned his gaze away, staring down at the kitchen table, thinking about what his brother may be pondering.

It was obvious that Steven was being paid to spy on him by Mycroft. Mycroft did it almost every time without fail, as a test of sorts, as well as a clear and easy way to keep tabs on his young bother. To a certain extent. Steven, in his emotional state, would no doubt blabber to Mycroft all about what had happened. In fact, Sherlock was quite certain that Steven had done so right after first seeing John, and then again that morning, which had Sherlock both curious and suspicious, because Mycroft had yet to appear or contact Sherlock in any way, demanding an answer. What was he waiting for?

He was pulled from his thoughts by John joining him at the table, sliding his feet against Sherlock’s as he eyed the oven carefully, in which sat the pan, “God, I hope I’m doing this right,” he muttered, then turned back to the table, folding his hands in his lap. “First full meal; burnt omelette. Yum.”

“It’s fine,” Sherlock told him, oddly comforted by the sensation of John’s feet against his own. “We’ll get take away tomorrow.”

John smiled, “I might even have a change of clothes by then.”

“Shame. I’ve quite gotten used to this look,” Sherlock murmured with a small smile, eyes flicking to the mark on John’s chest. “Not sure I want you enclosed in hideous jumpers.”

“I don’t think this is the time of year to be walking around bare-chested,” John chuckled. “And you take that back. Those jumpers are beautiful!”

“You don’t seem much affected by temperature,” Sherlock replied, tilting his head. “Or not that I noticed.”

“I’m not getting rid of the jumpers,” John told him firmly, checking on the omelette once again before rising to gather plates.

“I could always…order you too,” Sherlock let slip without full conscious thought, fighting down a wicked, mischievous smirk.

John paused as he set the plates down, “You dare, and I burn that precious coat of yours.”

“You can’t threaten me,” Sherlock replied and snagged John’s wrist with one hand, reaching up with the other to trace the scar, still playful as he looked up into John’s face. “You can’t disobey me.”

John grinned in return, “You can’t order me to do everything. What would be the fun in that? I’d just be another mindless drone.”

“But you’d be my mindless drone. That’s the difference.” Sherlock said, instantly taken back by his words and releasing John to sit up on his chair.

John hummed, still smiling, as he leaned over the table, “Yours?” he said, stroking a hand along Sherlock’s neck. “I suppose that could be acceptable.” His hand lingered for a moment before slowly drawing away, and he pulled the hot pan from the oven, turning everything off and using a spatula to dish up the meal.

Sherlock reached to rub at the lingering heat from John’s touch impulsively before he could think twice about it, and forced his hand down again, tucking in his chair and pulling his plate close, “Do you enjoy a…normal meal, normal food, with as much delight? What does food taste like to you? Ordinary? Dull?” Sherlock licked his lips and swallowed, lifting his head. “Pleasurable?”

“I’ll let you know,” John told him, placing cutlery between them and depositing the pan in the sink.

“Did you enjoy the toast prior? Cold or not, did it taste like it should? Did it fill a void in your stomach at all?” Sherlock asked him, taking a knife and fork.

Returning to his seat, John shrugged, reaching for his own cutlery and the jar of eyes, “It tasted soggy, and cold,” he replied, “but it reminded me what food could taste like. Made me want more.” He held out the jar to Sherlock. “Seasoning?” he asked with a playful grin.

Sherlock took the jar in mild amusement, tilting and slightly shaking it, “Ever eaten an eyeball before?”

“I don’t think so,” John replied with a smirk, and cut into his food, turning it over and frowning at the blackened underside, though the top was nicely browned. “Have you?”

“Yes,” Sherlock replied easily. “Not human eyes, of course. Sheep eyes, fish eyes, pig eyes, cow eyes…” He waved a hand flippantly and put the jar down to start on his own meal, cutting up and shoving a forkful into his mouth without much hesitation.

“Huh,” John responded, then shovelled his own slice. He chewed it for several long moments, rolling his tongue around his mouth, and his eyebrows steadily climbed his brow until he finally swallowed. “Oh God.” He looked down at the plate of food. “How could I have forgotten something like you?” He cut another slice and ate it with a hum, clearly pleased.

“Perhaps it would be interesting to cook several dishes of food and have you try a bit of each?” Sherlock suggested. “Drinks too. – Do you remember tea? Coffee? Alcohol?”

“I could barely remember water before last night,” John told him. “Do you have any? Of… any of those?”

Sherlock motioned to several cupboards, “Should do,” he said, glancing back to his bedroom. “The best alcohol is in my room. Steven prefers some assortment of beer. Disgusting.”

John frowned as he chewed his next forkful, “I think I liked beer.”

“Say it ain’t so,” Sherlock groused with a curl of his mouth, half playful and half annoyed.

John chuckled, “I think I can remember enjoying a pint of bitter at the bar every now and then.”

“How pedestrian of you.” Sherlock took a few more forkfuls of food, unwilling to admit or notice how incredibly hungry he was.

John just shrugged and continued to eat, soon clearing his plate and leaning back in his chair with a sigh. His feet moved with him, brushing further along Sherlock’s feet until their lower legs were touching. “I hadn’t realised how much I missed that.”

“Hm. Does this mean you have not been to the bathroom? Do you…rid yourself of your wispy meals? I saw no toilet to speak of in your cell, so I’m going to assume you do not. So will you from this?” Sherlock asked as he cleared his own plate, scraping up anything left behind and pushing it into his awaiting mouth. He felt just as content as John looked when he was done, and spent a moment or two sucking at the taste and flavour from his teeth and tongue.

“… I’d forgotten about that part,” John replied with a frown, then sighed. “Oh well, consequences of living I suppose.”

“Mm. It can be a nuisance. Having to stop to void your bowels,” Sherlock said and bit down to stifle the twitching grin that was eager to grace his lips. “But it is waste product. Better out than in.”

John suddenly chortled, “I’ve heard that before. Where have I heard that?”

“It’s a known phrase. A lot of people say it. It’s been around for a while.” Sherlock responded. “Mostly conserved for vomiting or flatulence.”

“No, no,” John insisted, waving his hand. “I remember it in this specific way. It was… ‘Better out than in, I always say’.” He said the phrase with a Scottish lilt. “It was in a movie. I know it was.”

Sherlock frowned at him, “Oh.” He shrugged and licked at his fork, putting it down on the plate, feeling satisfied. “I’ve no idea what you’re talking about then.”

“Aw, that’s gunna bug me,” John moaned, leaning his head back to look up at the ceiling. “Thank God for the Internet.”

“Brilliant,” Sherlock grumbled. “That means you’ll be fiddling about on Youtube most of the night.”

“Youtube?” John queried, but then sat up. “Oh! That video website, right?”

“Indeed,” Sherlock nodded and got up to wander for the fridge, pulling out one of Steven’s beer bottles and holding it out to John, complete with bottle opener.

John reached for them both and, after examining the label, opened it, “Cheers,” he said, raising the bottle in Sherlock’s direction, then took a swig. Clicking his tongue against the roof of his mouth, he swallowed his mouthful and looked down at the bottle dubiously. “Hm. Not quite what I was expecting.” He looked at the label again, then shrugged, taking another swig of it anyway.

“It’s poor quality. As I said before, disgusting.” Sherlock watched him, finding it oddly surreal and comfortable to be near John as he drank from the bottle at the kitchen table, chest bared and legs restfully extended.

“You should have tried the stuff my men made when we were in France,” John said with a chuckle. “God, that was closer to moonshine than beer.”

Sherlock tilted his head, “You seem to remember a lot more when you are calm and contented. You reminisce quite a bit – It would be interesting to see how far your memory goes at some point. Perhaps you should write down everything in which you recall from your past? Perhaps I should even…order you to remember? See what happens…”

John looked at him over the bottle as he took another sip, “Sounds painful.”

“Obviously. No matter what I order seems to be painful in some respects,” Sherlock said, stepping over to him. “At this moment in time, I am content enough to let your foggy past linger in the background. However I won’t always be so lenient. – I have to know more about you, about what you are. I want to know more. I cannot let it pass. I must have some of the answers. I must understand it.”

“No puzzle left unsolved,” John said with a grin. “Alright. I want answers as much as you, and if this works…” He took another swig of the beer and scooped up the eyes again. “You propose I keep a journal of some sort?”

“Yes. Something like that. Note down any and all memories that pop into your head. Dreams too. Dreams could be useful,” Sherlock told him. “If you dream?”

“Nightmares,” John replied. “Usually.”

“All the better,” Sherlock smiled. “Nightmares can be just as fascinating.”

John hummed and finished off the bottle, “Well that was thoroughly disappointing,” he said, and rose from his seat, opening the fridge to return the eyes to where they belonged. “Tea?”

Amused, Sherlock nodded, “Yes. Tea would be lovely.”

Pulling the carton of milk out of the fridge door, John filled up the kettle and set it on boil, “So, this Detective Inspector of yours,” he said as he pulled some mugs out of the cupboard. “What’s he like?” He started looking in tins. “Where are the tea bags?”

Sherlock motioned to the correct tin idly, “I have his ID if you want to look at it?”

Collecting the correct tin, John dumped the tea bags in the mugs, “”You have his ID?” he chuckled. “Does he know you pick his pockets?”

“Yes. I do it when he’s being overly annoying,” Sherlock grinned.

John hissed a laugh and turned to face him, “Go on then. Let’s see it.”

With a small, impish bounce on the soles of his feet, Sherlock turned and revisited his bedroom, opening the third drawer of his dresser and pulling out a wallet from beside a heap of various types of handcuffs, retuning to John’s side, “Here,” he said, holding it out with a flourish and a surge of supercilious pride.

Accepting it from him with a smirk, John opened the leather casing and looked down at the badge and identification card inside, “’Detective Inspector Gregory Lestrade, New Scotland Yard’,” he read, tilting his head to the side as he looked at the photo. “Looks very serious.” He looked at Sherlock and copied the serious face.

 Sherlock snorted with a laugh, “Normally his expression is one of confusion. Almost constantly,” he said.

“Maybe you should get a picture of his confused face and fix his ID then,” John suggested, looking back at it before handing it back.

Taking it, Sherlock gave the picture of Lestrade a glance, his amusement and smile falling as he did so, “You’ll have to be careful around him still. He misses much and he needs me often, but he is not as stupid as the others. He can be astute in a lot of ways – With any luck he won’t bother you or turn you away if I bring you along. I’m sure I can talk him around. I need an assistant. I work better that way. I prefer it.”

“Was that a compliment I heard?” John asked, pretending to be shocked. “Sherlock Holmes doesn’t think someone’s very stupid!”

Sherlock flushed but rolled his eyes, “Nine times out of ten he’s still a blind imbecile. Otherwise he’d not need me, would he?” He folded his arms. “And I compliment people. If they deserve it.”

“I bet you do,” John replied, stepping in to Sherlock’s space. A moment later, the kettle finished boiling, and he turned away to finish making the tea. “Milk, sugar?”

“Sugar. Please.” Sherlock looked back at Lestrade’s face, at the man’s stern gaze and stoic mouth, and then pocketed the ID.

Searching through the tins again, John pulled one closer and dumped the tea bags on a plate by the sink. He sipped at the left mug, wrinkling his nose a little, then added some milk, which appeased him, and dropped a teaspoon of sugar into the other mug.

“Two,” Sherlock told him as he came to stand close to the man’s back, motioning for more sugar. “I take two sugars in both my tea and coffee.”

John nodded and deposited a second spoonful into Sherlock’s drink, giving it a stir and popping the spoon in his mouth as he handed Sherlock his mug, “Your tea, sir,” he said around the metal, making him lisp the T and S.

“Thank you, Jeeves,” Sherlock said with another roll of his eyes, taking the mug and wandering into the living room, giving a fleeting glance at the television. His chair, which Steven had sat upon much to his annoyance, was further back than he’d like, and he hooked his foot around it, tugging it back into place. Everything in the living room had been rearranged and angled to fit Steven’s wishes. Sherlock couldn’t remember the last time he’d bothered to correct any of it.

Following him in, John looked around the space, then dropped carefully into the other seat, though he did throw one of the thicker cushions onto the sofa as he settled. Stirring at his tea with the spoon, he took another careful sip, and relaxed back into the seat.

“It suits you,” Sherlock mentioned after a soft silence between them, sitting down. “The chair.”

“Does it?” John asked, brushing his hand along the arm with a smile. “It’s comfy. I like it.”

Sherlock felt his mouth twitch up into a mirroring smile and he took a small sip of his own tea, “Good.”

John grinned and returned his hand to his mug, “Yours suit you too,” he said after a few more quiet minutes. “Very sharp.”

“I know,” Sherlock told him with a flare of haughtiness many would have scoffed at. He crossed his legs and gave the living room another look over, unhappy with the layout and look of it.

John chortled, then followed his gaze over his mugs steam, “What?”

“I hadn’t realised how much I’ve vanished from this room,” Sherlock replied lowly, almost inaudibly, as he turned to gaze at the mantel. He saw nothing but Steven. Steven and Mrs Hudson. There was hardly anything of his left in the spaces around him, only shadows of where things once were. It wasn’t an issue, not really. He had chosen to let Steven take over, had allowed to be pushed to the side-line. He lived for the Work, after all, for adventure, riddles, mysteries, and danger. He stayed out and away as much as he was able, preferring action to the mundane tedium of day-to-day life. So why did the flat always bother him so?

John looked around him, at the books and photos, and hummed, "Maybe we should have a bonfire."

“Don’t tempt me,” Sherlock mumbled with a sideways glance at him.

"It could be fun," John said in a sing-song voice. "Though I suppose Mrs Hudson wouldn't appreciate it."

“It would be _so_ fun…” Sherlock whispered in agreement, eyes flitting to things he’d love to see burn. How would it melt? Would it explode? How long would it take for the fire to consume everything? Sherlock blinked and shook the questions and thoughts away, taking another sip of tea.

"Whatever he leaves behind?" John suggested.

Sherlock glanced at John with a hum and a curling grin, “And I was told it was I whom was the bad influence.”

"They obviously don't know you that well," John chirped, and returned his attention to his tea.

With a gentle laugh, Sherlock let himself lounge back in his chair, pushing most, if not all, of the current problems he still had to face aside for the moment and allowed time to go on around them as they sat in comfortable silence together. The television was still on, but it was nothing but background noise, and did nothing to distract from the contentment Sherlock felt. Despite everything, despite the bulging door in his mind, despite the scorching lick of sadistic pleasure, and despite the heady want of power, Sherlock felt at ease.

They remained in contented companionship until they finished their drinks, and Sherlock continued to relax while John vanished to retrieve his laptop. John became avidly interested in whatever it was that was on the screen, at one point exclaiming about how he'd 'found it' and talking about some nonsense something called a shrek, along with a donkey and a princess. He calmed down after a bit of gesticulating, but after that was done he stilled entirely. Luckily there was not a sound from the computer, so Sherlock was saved the annoyance of Youtube, at least for that evening.

John didn’t really do much else after that, mostly just staring at the computer screen and chuckling on occasion, but some time around three in the morning, he started to nod off again. With an enormous yawn, John closed the laptop and gave Sherlock a smile, rising, only to stand in front of him with a hand outstretched in askance.

Sherlock glanced at it from under his lidded eyes and let it hang between them for an extra minute before he took it, “Yes?” he murmured.

“Let’s go to bed,” John responded, quietly, softly, words a soothing calm of comfort, and he gave Sherlock’s hand a squeeze, and a light tug.

Sherlock blinked sluggishly, letting John’s words wash over him, and pushed to his feet, “I’m not tired.”

John looked up at him, biting the inside of his mouth, then looked down at the ground, “Oh. Okay.” He started to let go of Sherlock’s hand. “It’s okay. I’ll just…” He took a step back. “Goodnight, Sherlock.”

Sherlock followed and tightened his grip, both impulsive actions without much thought, “I’ll come with you though. I might as well.”

John looked up at him again, shocked, but then in soundless thanks, and slowly led the both of them through the kitchen and out into the corridor. Once they reached Sherlock’s room, he set the laptop on the side, and turned into Sherlock, pressing close as he rested his head on Sherlock’s shoulder, arms wrapping around his torso, “Thank you,” he whispered.

“…What...what for?” Sherlock replied, unsure and self-conscious as he coiled his own arms around in return, peering down at the curve of John’s ear. “What were you watching to make you this sentimental?” He huffed out a laugh, though it was as awkward as he felt.

“I just…” John swallowed, pushing his face further into Sherlock’s shoulder. “I needed to make sure.”

Sherlock frowned down at him, lost on what to do about the change, and confused about the stirring, responding empathy that he felt raising within him. Was that his own feelings or were they John’s feelings coming through via the bond? “Make sure of what?” he asked. “I doubt your imagination is this vivid – And it can’t be a dream as you said you usually only have nightmares, and this is not exactly the most creative nightmare, if so, is it? Nothing too daunting here. My nightmares—” Snapping his jaw shut, Sherlock berated himself for the slip and looked away. He let tense and uncomfortable silence extend and surround them for a moment before he spoke again. “Will you constantly need confirmation such as this?”

“… I don’t know,” John replied. “I don’t think so.” He pulled back a little, keeping his hands on Sherlock’s sides as he looked away in what looked like shame. “I just needed… this.”

“Probably a side effect to the bond,” Sherlock told him, trying to explain away everything that made little to no sense. Until he could understand and figure out the magic, the lore, and the creature John was, then everything could be related or effects of what he’d done. Looking at John’s face, Sherlock tilted his head. “What else do you need?”

John blinked blearily up at him, then, with slow, careful movements, brought his hand up to cup the side of Sherlock’s head, and brought it forward, meeting it half way with his own. With their brows touching, John closed his eyes and smiled, “Just this,” he hummed, hand slipping down to brush over the mark on Sherlock’s chest.

Sherlock’s breath hitched at the touch, his heart instantly hammering and the skin under John’s hand gushing with heat, “All right,” he said in a whisper, adjusting his stance.

For the next minute, or perhaps longer, they just stood there, John’s hand hovering over Sherlock’s heart, their heads leaning together, but then John shifted, reaching for Sherlock’s right hand, and slowly bringing it to rest over his own scars. When Sherlock’s fingers brushed against his skin, John shivered, his pulse racing beneath Sherlock’s palm, and he looked up into his eyes with such devotion that it made the breath catch in his throat.

With a flinch, Sherlock jerked backwards, stumbling into the bedside table and almost falling over, “What was that?” Swallowing thickly, Sherlock fumbled to keep the lamp from tipping and then straightened up, running shaking hands through his hair. There was an electric buzz under his skin, an itch and a rumble that he couldn’t understand or place.

John stared after him, bringing his now free hand up to brush lightly over where Sherlock’s hand had been, “You feel it too?”

“What?—Of course I felt it!” Sherlock took a deep breath and tried to shake away the lingering feeling. His heart was pounding, filling his head, vibrating his chest.

Taking a cautious step closer, John reached out for Sherlock’s mark again. “…Wait,” Sherlock told him, though he made no move to stop him. “Just…wait. We don’t know what that was or what it means. The bond…it…” He glanced over at the books.

John paused, drawing his hand back a little, but then he took another step closer and smiled, “Think of it as an experiment,” he said, touching Sherlock’s shoulder and slowly brushing his fingers down, giving Sherlock plenty of time to stop him, should he want to.

Sherlock clenched his teeth and looked down, watching the slipping and sliding descent of John’s steady hand, “Not a very good one – At least with the other, with my ordering you beforehand, at least with that we knew that it had a purpose, that it was one of the roles of the bond. We know nothing about what just transpired. There is no reason for it. No function. It’s…” He lifted his eyes and looked into John’s face. “There’s not really a need to test this.”

“But I want it,” John responded, pausing not even an inch from the mark. “Don’t you want this, Sherlock?”

“How can I want what I don’t understand? What I don’t know?” he answered. “Why do you want it? – And why did you look at me with such…” Sherlock gestured somewhat vaguely and couldn’t seem to finish the sentence.

John’s fingers twitched, “You don’t want this?” he asked, confused.

“Don’t want what?” Sherlock exclaimed. “What is this?”

“I don’t know,” John admitted, his fingers falling a little closer. “But it’s beautiful.”

Sherlock could barely keep his chest from heaving as he tried in vain to control his breathing, hesitant and perplexed, “You’re a soppy idiot,” he breathed lightly.

“Maybe,” John agreed, gathering Sherlock’s hand up again, “but you’re not stopping me.” He brought Sherlock’s hand over his scars again, but they didn’t touch, leaving the final choice up to Sherlock.

“No,” Sherlock said after a minute of strained stillness from them both, “no I’m not stopping you…”

John grinned at him then, and took a final step closer, simultaneously bringing their hands into contact with each other’s chests, and pressing his legs against Sherlock’s.

Clenching his eyes shut, Sherlock braced himself, but all that happened was the increase in his and John’s heart rates until they were practically beating in unison. He chest was warm where John was touching him and John’s torso was equally as heated. Sherlock took a breath, steadying breaths, and then opened his eyes with a frown of interest, looking at his hand spread on John’s bare skin, half blanketing and covering the scarring of his mark.

Bewildered at the difference, Sherlock lifted his gaze and seized up with yet another hitch of his breath, as the moment their eyes locked was the moment a shooting of energy, of power, as before rushed through him. He flinched again instinctively but fought hard from jerking back, and felt the same building itch and electric buzz. It got more and more intense, and Sherlock felt his eyes almost burn as he stared, unblinkingly, at John. He trembled and panted heavily, unable to control himself as he parted his lips and went taunt with his next, sharp inhale.

Suddenly there was a flash, a blinding light, and a bombardment of information, of thoughts and feelings and memories. None of them were his. All of them were loud and overwhelming.

He saw a battlefield, wrought with red and green and blue coated men, rifles and cannons and cavalry and infantry, men were looking up to him as he led them steadily across a field. His heart beat fast with fear and hope and the belief that they would win.

He saw a woman garbed in a long, large dress, her blonde hair pinned in a bun beneath a bonnet. She smiled up at him, hanging on his arm. He walked her down a street, a street he recognised, but horse-drawn carriages lined the cobbled roads, and a great smog filled the air. He felt an immense pressure in his heart every time she looked at him with those bright blue eyes, an overwhelming joy, something so huge he couldn’t even begin to comprehend.

He was stood at the foot of a grave, the headstone was blurred, but he felt cold, empty, angry, a rage at himself for failing, at the world for refusing to help. Tears flooded down his cheeks as he knelt in the snow, raking his fingers through the surface and tearing at the grass below. He felt so hollow, so lost. He wanted it to end.

He was in a large tent, mud caking the ground, the fabric of the walls stained brown and red, beds lined the walls and moans filled the air. Women in once white aprons flitted between beds, but he was busy, wrapping a man’s leg – or the stump where there had once been a leg – as he cried in pain. There wasn’t enough morphine. There was _never_ enough morphine.

He was in an alley, another woman on his arm, dustbins lining the walls. She looked like _She_ had, pretty, blonde, blue eyed, her smile just as beautiful. They paused, and his lips are on hers. Just a little nip. He doesn’t need much. Suddenly, electricity shot through his body, then again, and again, and he dropped to the floor, his world fading as his wife’s smile watched.

He was in a cell, _the_ cell, red symbols glowing around him, and there was a boy sat in the opposite corner. He was afraid, afraid of what he would do. He was so _hungry_. He couldn’t stop himself. He just smiled, and spoke, lies falling from his lips, and then he pushed the boy against the wall and…

Sherlock’s head jerked back and he fell to the floor, catching his hip on the bedside table on the way down and landing awkwardly on his arm. He was shaking, his head sore and throbbing and filled with deafening sounds and harsh, striking images. Sherlock cried out, grabbing at his hair, pressing at his temples, and thrashed with an unstoppable, uncontrollable convulsing. He couldn’t see, couldn’t think, couldn’t do anything but writhe, crushed under the weight of everything and nothing at once.

Abruptly, there were hands. They, brushed at his face, his hair, his fingers, than grasped at his shoulders, pushing him down against the floor as a further weight settled over his hips. A muffled voice appeared, or he became able to focus on it, and he grasped hold of it. When the words finally became clear, he realised it was John. “… -rry! Sherlock, Master, I’m sorry! Master, please! I’m so sorry! I’ll never do it again, I promise! Master! Master, come back!”

There were tears streaming down Sherlock’s face and he still couldn’t see, couldn’t see anything but bright blue eyes, but blood and snow and mud and gore and the sudden screaming faces of the cult members as their skin sank and their eyes rolled back and their jaws slackened. Sherlock wheezed and struggled, and tried to focus on John, tried to grab at him.

“John…J-John!” he forced from his mouth. “Make it stop…make—Hit me! Knock…knock me out!”

“… What? No, no I can’t,” John’s fingers gripped tighter at his shoulders. “I won’t hurt you again.”

Sherlock arched tautly, more and more faces, voices, and feelings piling on top of one another in a messy and filling collage that swelled and pushed at the back of head, “John…John it…” Sherlock felt sick and the convulsions only continued, making his muscles burn and strain and tear. “John hit…hit me…John do it!”

With what sounded like a sob, John moved shaking fingers up to cup at Sherlock’s face, “I’m so sorry, Master,” he said, and then the side of his temple blossomed with momentary pain before blissful darkness consumed him.


	3. Chapter 3

**The** first thing he became aware of was how much his body ached, and Sherlock groaned, lifting a heavy, shaking hand to his throbbing head. It felt as though he’d been through a gruelling, seemingly endless exercise regime whilst battling a bad case of the flu at the same time, and Sherlock hated it.

Slowly he opened his eyes, or tried to at least, and only realised his right eye was swollen shut when he touched the bulbous, tender, puffy and bruised skin with his fingertips. He remembered the hit as he hissed and gently prodded it, and glanced around with his left eye, trying to focus his blurry vision, thankful he was able to see.

He was lying on his bed, above the covers, which was odd since the last thing he could remember was falling to the ground. It must have been John, and as he turned to look at the other side of the bed, he found it empty. With a frown, he looked around, almost missing his quarry, but then he looked back in the corner by the wardrobe, and found John curled up in a ball, knees pulled to his chest and hands gripping his hair as he rocked himself from side to side.

“…John?” Sherlock whispered, his voice croaky and broken. He winced and swallowed, trying again. “John.”

John froze, the rocking ceasing, before he lifted his head. His eyes were rimmed red, and tear tracks lined his cheeks. He looked pale, and scared, yet he scurried to the side of the bed as soon as he realised Sherlock was awake, “Sherlock, Master, oh God, I’m so sorry. I hurt you. I should never have done what I did. I was so scared. I woke up and you were still unconscious, and I thought I might have hit you too hard. Are you okay? Should I get you some cream?...”

“Stop talking,” Sherlock complained quietly, cupping his forehead. “I told you to hit me. I needed it. It’s fine. And I’m fine.” He squinted at John’s face. “Stop that. Feeling guilty. You’re being stupid.”

“But I could have killed you,” John whispered, his eyes tearing up once again.

“Yes. But you didn’t,” Sherlock told him, sighing loudly. “You almost have me as a snack back in that cell, then you planned to finish me off once you were freed, and only now you’re upset you almost killed me? – The Internet has rotted your brain.” He tried to smile at John, though it felt like it came out as more of a grimace and so he reached out with one hand to nudge John’s arm. “I’m not dead. I’m not even brain dead. I’m fine. Stop tormenting yourself it’s a hideous, annoying and human attribute, and you’re better than that.”

Sniffing, John nodded, and scrubbed at his eyes, “Right, yes,” he said, touching the spot Sherlock had nudged. “Of course.”

“In fact, look on the bright side,” Sherlock said, “at least the experiment was a success? Now we know what ‘it’ was between us. More or less.” Looking John over again, Sherlock glanced uncomfortably around the room and lifted his hand to cup and then clumsily pat John’s cheek.

John frowned at him, “We do?” he asked. “All that happened was that… electric feeling, and then you were in pain.”

“What?” Sherlock tried to sit up a bit but found he was too weak to do so, his head spinning. “That’s not what happened…well, not to me. I saw what I presume were your memories. I saw your wife, Mary. I saw war and people dying all around you…I saw the first time you killed in that cell…”

“You… you did?” John asked, blinking in shock.

“I had expected that you’d have noticed…obviously not,” Sherlock muttered thoughtfully, finding it intriguing that John had no idea he’d been propelled through his mind.

John brushed his hand over the scars in thought, “I’m… sorry you had to see some of that.”

“I must have broken the connection a little too briskly when I pulled away, resulting in what happened,” Sherlock said, watching John and trying to get up again, only to fall limply back to the bed with a stifled wince.

“Stay still,” John told him, fluffing the pillow under his head. “Let your body heal before you move.” He settled back on the floor, closer this time, and held onto Sherlock’s hand, absently stroking his thumb along the back of it.

Sherlock peered down at him and curled his fingers with a gentle flex to gain John’s attention, “What’re you sitting on the floor for?”

John smiled slightly – more of a curl of his lip than an actual smile – and looked at their hands, “I don’t want to move the bed too much; I have no idea how hard I hit you, though that bruise does not look nice.”

Reaching back up toward his face with his free hand, Sherlock touched his eye again and then the side of his head, “I’m sure it’s not that bad,” he said even as he felt how swollen his temple and the side of his face was. He pushed down to check but twitched in sudden, sharp pain, and stopped, feeling light-headed.

“Careful!” John hissed, pulling Sherlock’s hand away as half of his face twitched. “That feels like a fracture,” he muttered, bringing his own hand to the side of Sherlock’s face and running careful, practiced fingers over and around the wound.

“What kind of fracture?” Sherlock asked and went to touch again, though let his hand fall back down to the bed at John’s shooting glance. “Hopefully a linear fracture…”

With a little more careful probing, John fell back with a sigh, “From the way it felt when you touched it, and from how the skull itself feels, I would say your hopes are well founded.”

“Good. See? Not bad,” Sherlock told him and tried once again to smile at him. “Check my eye is okay though, will you?”

Rising onto his knees again, John dutifully checked his eye, opening the lid carefully and examining it closely, “Look left.”

Ignoring the pain from John pressing on the bruised lid, Sherlock did as he was told, happy he could see out of it, “What’s it look like?”

“A little blood shot – and right – but otherwise fine,” John replied, paying attention to how the eye was moving. “No damage to motor control at least.”

“Pull up that chair,” Sherlock told him, motioning to it with a flutter of his fingers, “I won’t have you sitting on the floor like a bloody gnome.”

Giving him an attempt at a smirk, John rose from his position to collect the chair, immediately grasping hold of Sherlock’s hand again once he’d settled, “You’re sure you don’t want me to help?”

Sherlock frowned slightly, “Help? Haven’t you already done that? – Putting me on the bed off the floor helped,” he told him, looking at their joined hands.

“You know what I mean.”

“It’s a black eye and a small fracture. It’s nothing I can’t handle,” Sherlock sighed.

John nodded solemnly, and turned to look at the door with a frown, “There are people coming up the stairs.”

Sherlock blinked at him and then went to tilt his head and listen, but the movement brought a wave of sickness and pain, “People or Mrs Hudson?”

“… People,” John replied, smelling the air. A heady grin grew on his face. “Delicious,” he muttered, but then shook his head. “I mean, uh…” He blinked and looked at the door again. “They’re going upstairs.”

“To Steven?” Sherlock strained his ears, focusing and listening, and lo and behold, there were indeed soft thumps of footsteps, many footsteps, moving and shifting upwards. Small little coughs and grunts could be heard, but that was all. No talking. No whispering.

John tilted his head to the side, “There are more going into the living room.”

Sherlock frowned with a ripple of discomfort and grit his teeth, pushing himself up onto his elbows. He tried to swing his legs off the side but his head throbbed, his body shook, and his muscles ached and burned and twitched.

“Stop moving,” John told him, pushing him back down on the bed, running his fingers over Sherlock’s bruised face. “You’re doing yourself more harm than good.”

“People are in our—People are in the flat. I need to know why. I can’t very well find that out lying here like some…invalid!” Sherlock snapped in annoyance, embarrassed by his weakness.

“Well you _are_ an invalid!” John retorted. “If moving hurts so much, then I’m not letting you out of this room until you are capable of standing without feeling dizzy.”

Sherlock glowered as best he could out his left eye and clenched his jaw, “You go then. Go and see what’s happening – I have my assumptions but I can’t be sure.”

John huffed, but nodded, “Alright,” he said, standing from his seat and giving Sherlock’s hand one last squeeze before heading towards the door. Before he exited though, he gave Sherlock a hard glare. “Don’t move.”

“Just hurry up!” Sherlock told him, letting his head relax onto the pillow under it to stop the raging throb of pain.

John chuckled lightly, then opened the door, stepping out into the hallway. He was gone for less than a minute, but from what Sherlock could hear of people moving up and down the stairs and around the rooms, he was already able to build up a bit of an idea. By the time John had returned, he could have guessed what was going on.

“Lots of men in suits and ear pieces,” John said as he settled on the chair again. “They’re stealing all our bonfire fodder.”

“Mycroft,” Sherlock nodded, only to regret the movement instantly. Clumsily, Sherlock reached into the pocket of his twisted and rumpled dressing gown, taking out his phone, determined to find out what was going on. He didn’t completely understand Mycroft’s motives.

John frowned, “Your brother? Why would he help Steven?”

“I don’t think he’s doing this for Steven,” Sherlock told John, trying to focus with one eye as he typed out a message and hit send. Mycroft obviously had looked up John, had obviously been in contact with Steven and therefore was told everything that Steven thought he knew and had seen, but that didn’t explain why his brother would send his minions to force Steven out so quickly.

“… That’s a bit intrusive, isn’t it?” John asked, but then hummed. “Well, I suppose you can’t become the British Government without being nosey…”

Sherlock opened his mouth to reply but his phone buzzed and chimed in his hand with an incoming call, and he peered at the name on the screen in frustration for a moment or two, before he answered it, “What’s the occasion? As much as I actually appreciate--”

“How are you, brother mine?” Mycroft drawled from the other end, trying to play around the fact that his voice was tense. “Not being too noisy, I hope?”

Suspicious, Sherlock took a breath, leaving a silence to stretch between them for a moment, “What are you doing?”

“Facilitating.”

“Why?”

Mycroft sighed, “How is…Dr Watson?” he asked, causing Sherlock to tighten his grip on his phone.

John rolled his eyes and grabbed the phone from Sherlock’s hand, bringing it up to his own ear, “Hello? I’m sorry but you’re going to have to call back later, bye!” And with that, he hung up on perhaps the most powerful person in the country and dropped the phone on the bed.

Sherlock blinked at him, “John…you…” he trailed off and laughed shortly with a faint grimace.

“Whoever it was, they were interrupting your rest,” John replied. “Now stop aggravating your head and stop, moving.”

“John, I need to find out why he’s doing this,” Sherlock told him and motioned out to where people were still moving things. “It doesn’t make sense. Not yet – This might be bad. He clearly did as I thought and looked you up the moment Steven gave him your full name. Then he went quiet and now he’s helping Steven move. It doesn’t add up. Why do this? Why get Steven out? Normally he’s trying to keep people in to spy on me.”

“Well you can find that out _after_ you get better,” John told him, grasping hold of Sherlock’s hand again. “If you want to message him, I will do so, but I will not have you using your phone.”

“I’m fine. Stop mothering me and fussing!” Sherlock griped with a long and rough exhale through his nose. “I must have messed up. I must have missed something. But what? And why does that equal…this?” He couldn’t think straight and he hated it.

“Stop it. You’re going to give yourself a headache,” John griped.

“You’re giving me a headache!” Sherlock childishly retorted sullenly.

“That’s what doctors do,” John retorted with a smirk. “Now stay still, and try not to think too much.”

Sherlock shot him a one-eyed glower, “Impossible.”

“Then don’t think too hard,” John replied, patting Sherlock on the hand and pulling out a cardboard box from his pocket. “I brought you some painkillers.”

“…Thank you,” Sherlock mumbled, putting his phone back into his pocket for the time being, mind still focused on the questions, on the puzzle, but divided by his attention on John. He gave the man a glance over and held out a hand for some tablets.

Though his eyes were still red, they were less so than earlier, and his hair looked particularly messy – probably from how he’d been pulling at it – but mostly he looked the same as he always had. Pushing two of the tablets out of the packaging, John dropped them onto Sherlock’s awaiting hand with a nod in acknowledgement of the thanks.

Swallowing them dry, Sherlock sighed, “I need you to keep an eye on them,” he told John. “I don’t trust them.”

“Don’t trust them to do what?”

“Anything,” Sherlock huffed with a laugh. “They’re following Mycroft’s orders.”

John sighed, “I can’t be everywhere at once,” he muttered, then looked down at Sherlock, biting his lip. “If I help you to your chair, will you promise not to move?”

Sherlock gave John a small smile and rolled his eye, “I promise – Just go and sit in the living room and keep an eye on them. Mycroft enjoys planting annoying hidden cameras about the place.”

John glared at him, obviously not convinced by the promise, but nodded, and brought his hands to support Sherlock, “Okay, easy does it then.”

Reaching out to him, Sherlock grasped onto John’s naked shoulders, heart skipping when his fingertips smoothed over part of the scar as he did so. His head throbbed as soon as he lifted it and he had to swallow down the sudden need to vomit as the room span and his bruised face and eye pulsed and ached. He felt heavy, limp, and useless, and he despised his weak body as he forced himself up and into John’s arms, slumping against him with a barely contained hiss of pain.

"Careful," John muttered, holding him still for several moments as Sherlock gathered himself, then pulled back, bringing a hand to cup at his uninjured cheek. "Okay?"

“Fine,” Sherlock whispered, not commenting on the way the room continued to spin around him.

"Okay." John moved his hand back to Sherlock's side, then heaved Sherlock up, switching their places with barely a huff.

Gripping the armrests, Sherlock inhaled deeply to keep the nausea at bay, and forced a smile, “Thank…you, John.”

John smiled at him, giving his hand one last squeeze, "Don't do anything too strenuous now," he said. "I'll be back once they've gone." 

“Don’t kill them,” Sherlock threw out teasingly, looking up at him from under his lashes.

"Ha ha," came the sarcastic reply, but John gave him an amicable look as he left the room.

The second John left and treaded steadily down the corridor Sherlock took out his phone again, typing out yet another text to his brother. He got half way through it before his phone chimed with an incoming call and Sherlock quickly muted it before he answered, pressing the phone to his ear.

“Isn’t this what you wanted?” Mycroft murmured.

“Since when have you done what I wanted?”

Mycroft huffed a quiet, humourless laugh, “Tell me about him.”

“What’s to tell? You already know everything anyway,” Sherlock said, though he shifted the tone of his voice at the end, making it sound like a statement as well as a question.

“True.”

Sherlock glared, “You think he’ll replace Steven? You think John will even want to stay here?”

“Won’t he?” Mycroft shot back. “You two seem awfully…close.”

“You know that’s not true,” Sherlock scoffed, rubbing his head and then tenderly touching his eye.

“…What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“You can’t lie to me.”

Sherlock shot the phone a sneering smirk, “No?”

“No.” Mycroft said, and the definite way in which he said it, made Sherlock pause. The silence was broken by Mycroft’s sigh. “You did a terrific job in such a short amount of time. Very neat. Very detailed.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Inspector Lestrade thought so to.”

Sherlock frowned, “What?”

“I’m certain you would have gotten away with it actually, if it weren’t for him.”

Confused, Sherlock sat up, lurching forward at the surge of dizziness, “I don’t…”

“Of course, there were a few things that looked…sketchy, shall we say, but only if one was looking for them. If one looked at it a certain way. Only if one were to look deeper. – I shall have to keep more of an eye on you. I can’t have you doing this again. Giving someone a new identity so easily,” Mycroft went on to say. “You could get into a lot of trouble, Sherlock. In fact, you are in quite a bit of it now, but…for the time being, I think I’ll let it slide.”

Muffled voices came through the wood of the door suddenly, and Sherlock heard John saying something particularly quietly, followed by several moments of silence, and then footsteps once again.

“He’s very loyal, very quickly,” Mycroft commented offhandedly. “You really must have impressed him.”

Sherlock pressed his lips together in frustration, “Why don’t you just say whatever it is you—”

“That’s quite a lot of packages,” Mycroft cut in. “You both seem to really like each other. Should I be expecting a happy announcement soon?”

“Sherlock, my things have arrived!” John shouted through the door, shortly followed by; “And those men are leaving!”

“I’ll be visiting you soon, brother mine,” Mycroft told him and Sherlock glared, ending the call with a fumble, sitting back in the chair as another wave of nausea bowled through him.

Something hit the corridor wall outside, and then the door opened, revealing a slightly sick-looking John, a box and two plastic packages under his arm as he tried to keep himself steady, “I thought I told you not to move too much.”

Sherlock subdued a shiver of pain, “I didn’t…”

Dropping the packages on the floor, John knelt in front of Sherlock and held his face carefully between his hands, looking into Sherlock’s eye, “You have to be careful,” he muttered.

“I am…being careful. I’m just sitting here,” Sherlock whispered, blinking slowly. “You stopped them from…setting up the cameras, then?”

John smirked, “They’ve done that before, have they?” he asked, brushing his thumb over Sherlock’s cheek. “They might have installed a few, but I caught three of them.”

“I’ll have a proper look later,” Sherlock told him, relishing in the warm touch of John’s fingers, and then turned his eyes to the packages he’d brought in meaningfully.

Following his gaze, John grinned, “My stuff arrived!” he proclaimed happily. “Well, most of it. But it’s here!” He leaned back, pulling the first of the plastic packages to himself. “Would you like to see what I bought?”

“I know what you bought. Horrible jumpers, a phone, a laptop…more horrible jumpers…” Sherlock smirked.

“That’s not all I bought,” John chuckled, and tore into the plastic, revealing… “Pyjamas and underwear too.”

“Amazing,” Sherlock muttered sarcastically, slumping a little more in the chair with a sigh.

“Oh don’t be like that,” John smirked. “I got a suit as well. And some good shoes.” He tore into the second plastic package and pulled out a plain white t-shirt, pulling it on before pulling the rest out. “Ah ha! The first jumper!” He flipped the small pile over to pull the black and white striped jumper he had pointed out the previous day over his head, and then rubbed at it over his chest with a happy sigh. “Oh jumpers, how I missed you.”

“…You’re an idiot. A ridiculous, stripy, idiot,” Sherlock told him with a small chuckle.

“But I am a happy idiot,” John replied, and pulled the box to him. “The front room is pretty empty now, by the way. Looks pretty barren.” He opened the box, pulling out yet another box, which held a pair of brow leather boots.

“Hm. Good. Billy can go on the mantel – And I have a lot of other things that I’d like to put around too. Or put back, I should say,” Sherlock murmured, watching John with vague amusement. He was like a child at Christmas.

“I should have bought some books…” John muttered, looking through the clothes before dumping all the rubbish in the cardboard box and cuddling the clothes to his chest. “I have things, Sherlock. My own things!”

“We’ve got plenty of books,” Sherlock said with a smile, reaching out to pat his shoulder for a moment or two.

“Yes, but they’re all _yours_ ,” John replied, then looked over at the door with a frown. “There’s someone else at the door.”

Sherlock bolted up and grunted at the onslaught of pain, overly angered, “It might be my brother – Tell him to bog off!”

John rose, and was about to leave when he froze, his eyes going wide. “That’s… that can’t be your brother.”

“How can you possibly know that?” Sherlock said through his teeth.

“… They’re like me,” John muttered, staring at the door as he placed his things down on the bed.

Sherlock frowned up at him, “What? Like you?—How can you be sure?”

John licked his lips, “We don’t… have the same kind of scent as you,” he explained. “We…”

Unfortunately, before he could get any further, Mrs Hudson’s voice started to chatter through the open door. “… boxes up and down the stairs, and, oh my word! Where did everything go?”

There was a masculine huff of laughter, “Seems like you had a bit of a clear-out.”

“…But…” Sherlock trailed off and tried to stand, gripping the chair with all his might and forcing, pushing, himself up and onto his feet with a stab of agony through his head and a shudder of weakened muscles.

John frowned, but ignored his own confusion to help Sherlock to his feet, bringing his arm about his own shoulders. “I’m sure that Steven didn’t have _that_ much,” Mrs Hudson continued. “Sherlock? The Detective Inspector’s here to see you!”

John blinked, “Detective Inspector? The… the man who gives you cases?”

Sherlock flailed for the doorway, gripping the frame and pulling himself over just as there were soft, nearing footsteps and a sigh, “I’ll just go on though, Mrs Hudson. You know how he is.” Lestrade appeared at the open door seconds later and stuttered to a stop, taking in Sherlock’s appearance with a flush of worry. “What the bloody hell happened to your face?”

“…But…but you’re…you’re not…” Sherlock couldn’t seem to speak and only stared at Lestrade as he stepped in and touched Sherlock’s forearm.

“ _Jesus_ , Sherlock,” he muttered. “I know there was a bit of a tussle but--” He shook his head, cutting himself short, and then looked at John with sudden interest.

John continued to frown at him, his posture having stiffened when the DI had touched Sherlock’s arm, and he looked like he wanted to push Lestrade away, but instead kept to Sherlock’s side, only drawing him back a little.

“I know it’s, uh, been a while, but I haven’t changed that much, have I? And you, you look… good.” Lestrade said to John, though he mirrored John’s frown and gestured to the chair. “Let’s just…sit Sherlock down before he falls down, yeah?”

“Changed?” John asked, bringing Sherlock another slow step backwards, though he only seemed to become more on edge. “We’ve met?”

Lestrade’s expression switched between being affronted and extremely worried, and he turned to shut the door to the bedroom with a quick glance out into the corridor, “You…don’t remember?” he asked John, sparing Sherlock only a brief look.

John ignored him for a moment, making sure Sherlock was settled in the chair once again and brushing his thumb over the back of his hand in comfort, “I don’t know you,” he said eventually. “All I know is what Sherlock’s told me.” He glared up at Lestrade then positioned himself between the two of them. “What do you want?”

“Right,” Lestrade sighed, face instantly stern as he moved around to stand at the end of Sherlock’s bed, his arms folding and his stance open and confident, yet wary. “Maybe you should tell me what happened then Sherlock?”

“You’re…not human?” Was the only thing Sherlock found he was able to say. “You’re like he is? You’re—How? How have you been able to keep this a secret? And why?”

“Isn’t that a stupid question?” Lestrade shot back. “How exactly did you react when you were introduced to John?”

“At first, I didn’t think about it, I couldn’t. I had more pressing concerns,” Sherlock murmured, though he inclined his head as slowly as he was able, still feeling dizzy. “John was…imprisoned. They had—”

“‘They’ being the dead bodies littering the floor?” Lestrade turned his gaze onto John. “All of them killed by you, am I right John?”

“Three years, Inspector,” Sherlock said sharply, gaining Lestrade attention once more. “They kept him imprisoned for _three years_. – They kept him, they starved him, and then they fed him.”

John growled a little, “I should have drained them all.”

Sherlock reached out to tug John back at the look of shock and then wariness that Lestrade gave in reply, “He lost several parts of himself in that cell, Lestrade,” he told him. “He doesn’t remember a lot of things. Some memories are stronger than others, and at times sights, sounds, tastes and smells have triggered many others. His emotions can also be erratic and…” Sherlock sat back and took a few deep, steady breaths, regarding Lestrade as the Inspector gave them both an increasingly worried look. “Did you search the entire place?”

“…Near enough all of it, yes,” Lestrade answered, lifting one shoulder as he gestured with one tucked hand. “I knew about him being locked up. Knew he had been kept in a cell. And I sort of figured out the timeframe. A little.”

“You mean you figured it out incorrectly?”

Lestrade’s sigh was sharp, “Yes. I didn’t think it was three years. I thought a few months at least. The clothes folded in the cell. They were faded and threadbare. And…yeah, I did notice that they weren’t John’s clothes. Not his style. But I didn’t think—”

“You didn’t want to think,” Sherlock corrected, and Lestrade clenched his jaw, glancing sadly at John.

John had started to clutch at his jumper, “Stop talking about me like I’m not here,” he said, frustration leaking into his voice. “Who are you? You know me? Great. I don’t know you. How did you find that place?”

Sherlock had a blinding, somewhat painful, moment of clarity, “Mycroft told you,” he murmured in a breathy whisper.

“Yeah,” Lestrade sighed.

“He knows.”

“Yeah.”

“For how long?”

Lestrade shrugged, “A while – Look, I’m sorry Sherlock, but you’ve got to understand—”

“Why tell him and not me?” Sherlock demanded.

“I didn’t exactly have a choice!” Lestrade snapped loudly, throwing an arm out to gesture vaguely to the bedroom window. “He did what he did best and found some…gaps in my history. Gaps I couldn’t really explain. Not…not without giving away what I was. Who I had been!” He turned to John. “And yes. I know you. I’ve known you for years! We go back quite a way, you and I. We were friends. Colleagues. Brothers in arms! – You disappeared after your wife passed and…I haven’t heard or seen you since. I tried looking for you but I thought you didn’t want to be found.”

John winced as Sherlock’s head throbbed from the sudden noise, but he blinked at Lestrade with an almost hope in his eyes, “You knew Mary?”

“Of course I knew her,” Lestrade replied, rubbing his face. “Can we…start over? Just…please, just sit down and let’s go through everything again. – There are some things I need to know. Specifically about…the people who held you captive and how exactly they did that.”

“What was our name?” John asked instead, stepping closer to the Inspector. “We had a name. What was it?”

Lestrade smiled at him, “I thought you picked your new name in honour of her, of you and her,” he said. “It was Watson.”

“Watson,” John repeated, then turned around to kneel at Sherlock’s feet with a joyful smile. “I remembered it! I remembered something about her!”

“You remember plenty about her,” Sherlock retorted irritably, remembering seeing her blue eyes and her curling smile and her blonde hair.

Lestrade shot him a look, “Don’t be a dick.”

John huffed, “He’s always a dick,” he said, and chuckled a little at the look Sherlock gave him.

“ _See_ ,” Lestrade said pointedly with a smile and a lift of his eyebrows, “he barely knows you and he already knows what you’re like – I told you that you can be dick-ish.”

“Don’t glare too hard or you’ll get a headache,” John warned, his voice laced with humour.

Lestrade’s smile faltered after a second, “Now, can one of you please explain to me what happened, step-by-step? To the best of your ability and knowledge, of course. I just need to know how you, John, were kept in that place, and how you, Sherlock, got him out and why? – Did you know what he was before you helped him? And…did you have to kill them all?”

“Yes,” Sherlock said impulsively. “Yes, we did.”

Lestrade’s eyebrows went higher, “‘We?’” Sherlock, you didn’t do it. There’s no way. I’m not that much of an idiot. I know when one of my own has killed.”

“He saved me because I was a puzzle that refused to be solved,” John explained, giggling slightly as he leaned back against the bed. “I was going to eat him, and he decided he wanted to solve the puzzle more than leave.”

Lestrade blinked, “You…were going to kill him?”

“Haven’t you been listening?” Sherlock complained. “They had him locked up for years. Starving him and then feeding him someone whenever they wished, whenever it pleased them. Or whenever someone stumbled upon what they were doing, which is what I did. – Yes. He was going to kill me. Though he was hungry for a lot more than my ‘soul.’” Sherlock didn’t want to explain it all again, he couldn’t think about it, couldn’t remember, not without panicking, not without the door bulging and leaking with laughter and blood and clawing questions. “If you searched the place, then you found their archives. They used some sort of… ‘blood magic.’ A ritual or incantation, to keep John locked up. It coated the walls, ceiling and floor with red symbols. John couldn’t leave. Not even through the metal door in the floor, in which I went down once I convinced him to let me escape in exchange for his freedom--”

“Wait a moment. Just…just wait,” Lestrade told him, holding up a hand and seeming on edge as he raked the same hand through his hair.

“Do you need to make notes?” John asked almost innocently.

Lestrade jerked and stared at John after hearing his tone of voice, “No,” he uttered. “No. It’s not that – I know what ‘magic’ you’re talking about. Or I know of it. It’s old magic. Ancient. Secret even.” He glanced at Sherlock and nodded. “I did see the archive, but there wasn’t enough there to do what you’re saying they did. That’s why I’m confused. How did they do that? And if they can wield that magic, why are they dead? – If they knew anything about it. If they were strong and capable…they’d not have needed those weapons and you wouldn’t have gotten out.”

“You just answered your own question there, Lestrade,” Sherlock found himself purring with a smirk. “They weren’t able to wield it. They weren’t strong and capable. They were stupid and pathetic and deserved to—”

“How did you get him out?” Lestrade demanded with a fierce, abrupt glower. “ _How_ , Sherlock?”

Sherlock tilted his head very slightly, still feeling overall weak and unwell, and glanced at where the books lay on his dresser arrogantly, “You really must learn to be more observant, Lestrade,” he said as the Inspector turned to gape at them, going so far as to stumble back.

John giggled again, “Ta da!” he exclaimed. “Sherlock’s _very_ good at magic, you know. He did lots of spells.”

“Oh my God,” Lestrade whispered. “What did you do? – Sherlock, tell me now. What did you do?”

“I freed him,” Sherlock said, feeling unsure about the look on Lestrade’s face, remembering slicing his palm open with a flash of pain. He grimaced and then glared. “What did you think I did? – Don’t look at me as if I had any other choice! I had no idea you were like him. If I had, then I might have contacted you. As it was, I had no alternative! I did what I had to do. I had to let him out. I couldn’t leave him to be continually used and damaged. What if he had been discovered, Lestrade? What if he had been worse?” Sherlock swallowed thickly, pushing back on the bulging door and his own throbbing headache. “I had to do it. So I did. I let him out. I let him out…and I made sure he couldn’t kill me once I did.”

John’s hand automatically clutched at the fabric over his shoulder and hummed, “Choices, choices,” he said and tapped his chin, emanating what he had done when Sherlock had presented him with the proposition. “I was free, out of my cage, out of the dark.”

Lestrade took a moment to stare at John, deliberating and quiet, and then looked at Sherlock, “What did you do to make sure of that?”

Sherlock looked back at the books, “There was some ritual or incantation. Something to bind John. I did it. I can…control him. Slightly.”

“You made him kill those—?”

“No,” Sherlock huffed. “I merely let him. – He was hungry, and they rather deserved it. They were murders. John might have done the killing, but they sent those innocent people to their deaths, purposely.”

Lestrade went silent for yet another moment, and then gestured to Sherlock’s face, and Sherlock tensed, “What happened to you?”

“My fault,” John muttered, curling in on himself again. “Didn’t mean to. I had to.”

“You hit him?” Lestrade took a deep, sharp breath. “ _Christ_ —”

“I told him to. Ordered him,” Sherlock interrupted.

“Why? Sherlock, for God’s sake, he could have killed you! He could have caved your sodding skull in!” Lestrade exclaimed, making Sherlock stifle the responding wince.

“I did something and it…backfired. He had to do it.”

“Otherwise what?”

“I don’t know!” Sherlock shouted in reply. “I don’t know, Lestrade – I might have used those books, I might have freed John, binded him to me, but that doesn’t mean I know anything about this! You said it yourself, the magic is ancient and secret.”

“Stop it!” John exclaimed, wincing at Sherlock’s pain. “You have to be careful.”

“How bad is it?” Lestrade asked, though he had directed the question at John rather than Sherlock.

“Linear fracture, bruising around the eye…” he answered.

Lestrade sighed and then stepped around the bed toward him, “Let me heal you.”

“What? – No!” Sherlock scowled at him. “It’ll heal. I’ll be fine. I’ve had much worse. I don’t need you to heal me--”

“Don’t touch him,” John growled, looking up at Lestrade with a dangerous look in his eye.

“Whoa!” Lestrade stepped back and lifted his hands, frowning in concern. “Jesus – I just want to help, John.” He lowered his hands slowly as he looked them both over with a worry that deepened the furrow of his brow. “John. You can’t act this way. Do you hear me? This isn’t you, but most of all, this is insane! Sherlock does not own you or belong to you—That magic has messed with you both.”

“I’m not me any more,” John replied, looking down at the ground and then up at Sherlock. “I haven’t been me for a very long time.” He looked back at the inspector with a frown. “And how do you know? You said you haven’t seen me since Mary died. That was before the First World War broke out! I could have changed a lot in that time!”

Lestrade scoffed, “Come off it – You wouldn’t growl at me for God’s sake!”

“Why the hell not?”

“You need to be healed,” Lestrade told Sherlock, pointing at him. “If your brother sees you like this and finds out that it was John that did it—”

“What?” Sherlock snapped. “If he found out, what could he _possibly_ do?”

Lestrade sighed through his nose and dropped his hand to his side, “Do you want to be stuck in bed? Because that’s where you’ll be until this fracture heals. – Look at you! You can barely keep your head straight!”

John looked away at that, biting the inside of his mouth, “I promised I wouldn’t do it again.”

“Wouldn’t do what?” Lestrade asked.

“Heal me. I don’t want it.” Sherlock told him with a clench of his fingers, trying to open his swollen eye to prove Lestrade wrong, to no avail.

“It’s not going to heal if you keep agitating it,” John muttered with a smirk.

“Let me heal you, Sherlock,” Lestrade said in an annoyed sigh, stepping closer. John’s frame stiffened once again, and he shifted a little on the bed, but he remained silent, keeping a wary eye on the newcomer.

Sherlock glanced between the doctor and the Inspector and leaned back in his chair, “No.”

“Sherlock…”

“I know what you have to do and I’d rather you didn’t put your mouth on me,” Sherlock sneered.

“It will take a long time for that fracture to heal though,” John pointed out, even as he continued to half-guard him. “It will hurt, for a long while.”

“I don’t care,” Sherlock mumbled as he looked up at a tired, resigned looking Lestrade.

“Yes you do,” John countered, titling his head to the side, a fond look on his face. “You just won’t admit it.”

“How about this then,” Lestrade said, trying to bargain and walking up to the side of Sherlock’s chair, “how about John heals you, and I…replace what John gives up? That way, you get healed, and John doesn’t go hungry?”

Though John clearly wanted to pounce on Lestrade, he was clenching his hand into the duvet and sending Sherlock fleeting, hopeful looks.

“This isn’t just about the fracture,” Lestrade said softly. “Whatever you did that ‘backfired,’ has really taken it out of you. It would put both John and I at ease if you just—”

“ _Fine_ ,” Sherlock got out between his clenched teeth, ignoring Lestrade’s beaming grin of success. “Just, shut up.”

With a grateful smile, John slid over to kneel between Sherlock’s legs and caught a hold of his hand, “I’m truly sorry,” he said once again, running his fingers over the bruise, then circled his hand around Sherlock’s neck. Before he did anything though, he gave Sherlock one last questioning look, just to make sure it was okay.

Sherlock shot Lestrade an awkward glance and flushed with a grind of his teeth when Lestrade rolled his eyes and turned his back on them, giving them some level of privacy. Sherlock wasn’t sure precisely why he wanted privacy all of a sudden, especially for something so ordinary to both John and Lestrade. He thought, for a second, on how and when and whom Lestrade had fed from, but turned his attention back to John with a faint nod of authorisation.

With a small smile, John leaned forward once more to kiss him. Pursing his lips ever so slightly, Sherlock mimicked what he did the first time John had healed him, though with less surprise and confusion.

As before, a sizzle of powerful energy and a tantalising gush of elation, engulfed him from the inside out, and he twitched with a shiver as it overtook him. He had pulled away when John had initially done what he was currently doing, though Sherlock made sure not to do it again, and kept their mouths joined, closing his eye and basking in the swirling, radiating, addicting taste and pleasure of what John was bestowing on him. He thought, only once, of where it had come from, and then gladly accepted it.

After what must have been only a few seconds, but had felt like hours, John pulled away with one last exhale, the sliver of that familiar something seeming to snap from between their mouths, disappearing within. Practiced fingers rose to touch at Sherlock’s brow and eye, probing it critically as blue eyes examined carefully, “Beautiful,” John breathed, and gave Sherlock a dazzling smile.

Still amazed at how outstanding and illogical but real it was, Sherlock lifted his hands to touch his face while Lestrade turned back around to them, “Thank you, John,” he whispered, clearing his throat when he noticed how Lestrade was looking at them.

Giving Sherlock’s hand a squeeze, John rose and turned to Lestrade, his head turned playfully to the side. Lestrade lifted one eyebrow, “Ready?” he asked, lifting his hands either side of John’s head, just shy of touching him.

With a nod of confirmation, John raised his own hands, one splaying out over Lestrade’s heart and the other resting on his shoulder.

Lestrade touched John’s face with one hand, cupping his cheek, and placed the second hand at John’s upper torso. He gave Sherlock a brief glance and then leaned in, pushing their foreheads together. Something flared in Sherlock’s gut at that moment, echoing in a rippling burn-like sensation in the mark on his chest. Lestrade then said something under his breath to John, too low for Sherlock to hear, and tipped his head, opening his mouth.

John tilted his in kind, eyes closing, and opened his own mouth with an inhale. A line of silver – almost like cobwebs, but wispy and glowing – passed between them, stretching across their open mouths and travelling down John’s throat. Sherlock shivered as he felt that pleasant tingle of euphoria filling him, spreading from the mark as John was fed, only for it to fade as Lestrade pulled away.

With a sigh, John looked up at the inspector with a smile, “I’d forgotten I could do that.” He took a step back, giving the man’s shoulder a squeeze. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Lestrade said with a responding smile, “now, seeing as I’m here and we still have much to discuss, how about I help you fill the living room and…” he looked at the packages, “help you unpack, John?”

“Sure!” John said, pleased, but then raised a finger. “But first…” He went over to the desk, picking Billy up from the stack of books, then walked over to present it to Sherlock. “I think he needs to return to where he belongs.”

Lestrade huffed with laughter, “Not that bloody skull again – I thought you’d gotten rid of him?”

“Never,” Sherlock replied, taking it from John with a grin and getting lithely to his feet, happy to be done with the dizziness and the pain. He felt energised and powerful and strong, and he liked it. Liked it a little too much, in fact.

John mirrored the grin and, picking up his things, opened the door with a flourish. Striding through, Sherlock got immense satisfaction from the empty state of the living room, and let his grin widen, putting Billy up on the mantel at the perfect angle with a soft pat. He scanned the spaces left by Steven, surprised to see some of his things having been hidden behind or underneath the man’s stuff, and then moved around, readjusting, replacing, and re-visualising as Lestrade followed the two of them out.

“Wow,” John commented, looking around. “He really did have a lot of stuff.”

Lestrade stood in the centre and crossed his arms, “I didn’t like him,” he said vaguely, shrugging when Sherlock arched an eyebrow at him. “Just saying.”

“You’re not alone,” John said, then, after dropping his things next to the considerable pile of packages and boxes on the floor by the table, plopped into the chair he had claimed as his the previous night. “The kingdom is free from tyranny once more.”

Turning his eyes from Lestrade’s confused frown, Sherlock locked gazes with John as he took a breath, lifting his chin and his voice, “Mrs Hudson, why don’t you make yourself useful and make a round of tea?” he suggested in a way that left no argument, motioning the landlady in from where she had been lingering on the landing.

The landlady stepped inside with a huff, “I’m not your housekeeper young man!” she scolded. “But just this once.” She approached John with a smile and he stood to meet her. “It’s good to see you’ve stayed Doctor Watson.”

“It’s John, Mrs Hudson,” the man replied, “and I could hardly leave.” He looked over her shoulder at Sherlock, then back at her again.

She chuckled and blushed slightly, “I’ll put the kettle on,” she said, and made her way into the kitchen.

Sherlock felt an odd tingle up his spine and avoided the glance Lestrade fixed on him, twisting to view the living room again and then returning to his bedroom. He gathered up his music stand, music sheets, and violin, and brought them through. Then picture frames, books, small bits and bobs from cases, from clients, from his past, and personal touches that he had been forced to either withdraw or ignore before.

“Oh Sherlock,” Mrs Hudson said sadly as she set the tray of mugs on the coffee table. “You should have said something!”

“Like it would have made a difference,” Sherlock replied as he nudged the sofa back further against the wall with his foot, caught up in redecorating.

She sighed, “I could have made something work for a bit. Perhaps 221C could have been rented, and then you wouldn’t have had to worry about a flat mate so much! You know I would have lowered the price for you if I could.”

After hanging an artistic painting of a skull on the wall, right of the sofa, Sherlock stepped back, tilting his head, “Is that straight?”

“Hm.” John looked at it carefully, eyes flitting between it and the line of the ceiling, then nodded. “It looks like it.” He picked up his mug and Sherlock’s from the tray. “Thank you, Mrs Hudson,” he said, then held Sherlock’s mug out to him.

“You’re welcome dear,” she replied, offering Lestrade his own drink before turning back to Sherlock, eyes flitting between him, John, and the boxes. “So. Am I to be expecting a new lodger soon?”

Sherlock took his mug without looking, curling his fingers around the handle and unable to stop or ignore the flare of amiability and pride in his gut as he correctly presumed the height and level at which John was holding it out for him, and then tried to act nonchalant with a breezy smile when he moved to fill the bookshelves, “Possibly.”

“Oh, how wonderful!” Mrs Hudson walked over to John and grasped at his free hand. “I knew you would stay, from the moment we met,” she said happily. “It seems that the room upstairs is free should you need it, and… well, you seem to know where most things are around the flat.” She gave Billy a bit of a wary look, but then smiled once again when she returned her attention to her new tenant. “You don’t have to put up with everything he does. Just needs a bit of a firm hand sometimes.”

John chuckled, “Duly noted, Mrs Hudson.”

“He’ll put up with what I tell him to put up with,” Sherlock heard himself mutter and he took a sip of tea, shifting from one corner of the living room to the other. He moved the desk and tucked in the chairs, hung up a few more framed pictures, relocated a lamp, and improved the angle of the television.

John gave Sherlock a predatory look over the rim of his mug, but otherwise made no sign that he had heard. Mrs Hudson, however, had not, and just hummed as she looked around at all the changes. “Must you put that thing on display?” she asked, indicating Billy. “It’s a bit morbid, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Sherlock agreed happily, walking past to trail his fingertips over the skull in a gentle slide.

“I think it’s interesting,” John chipped in. “A conversation piece.”

Mrs Hudson seemed unconvinced, “The Inspector agrees with me. Don’t you.”

Sherlock glanced at Lestrade as the man twitched and blinked, having been watching how they interacted silently with a thoughtful and apprehensive crease in his brow, “Hm? – Uh. Yeah. Yeah, I think it’s more than morbid seeing as you knew the bloke.”

“He said I could have it,” Sherlock murmured as he walked back to his bedroom, rummaging through the top shelf of his wardrobe to pull something down, returning with it and giving everyone in the room a cocky grin. “Anyway, I think he fits right in. What with the painting and…this…” Hefting the Bison skull Sherlock glanced around, eyes landing on the wall between the two windows. He moved toward it, determined to hang it there. “I have a nice glass case of a dead bat to place yet.”

“Oh Sherlock…” Mrs Hudson sighed, bringing a hand up to cover her eyes.

“A dead bat?” John chuckled. “Well, that’s certainly new.”

Mrs Hudson blinked at him in surprise, then patted him on the arm, “Remember what I said.”

He just shrugged in reply, setting his mug down as he watched Sherlock fiddle with the second skull, “It’s fine, really.”

Putting his own mug down, Sherlock hid his responding grin by turning his back to everyone, facing the wall and stepping up onto a chair and then the desk, extending his hand back at John, “I need a nail and the hammer,” he said, wiggling his fingers.

“They’re right next to you,” Lestrade told him, but Sherlock just wiggled his fingers further.

John chuckled again and slotted the hammer into his hand, walking over to the right window and leaning against the frame as he held the nails. He held one up as he played with the others in his fingers.

“Oh, honestly Sherlock,” Mrs Hudson chided with a shake of her head.

Giving John a sly glance, he took a nail and hammered it deftly into the wall with only a quick regard of the placement, not needing to check if it was in the centre, he already knew, “Don’t worry, the Bison won’t have a name,” he uttered as he hoisted it, “not yet, at any rate.”

“We could christen it?” John suggested, looking up as Sherlock heaved it up. “How about Wendy?”

“Why Wendy?” Sherlock asked.

He shrugged, “Do you know what a wendigo is?”

“No, he doesn’t,” Lestrade snorted and moved to stand nearby. Sherlock stepped back once the skull was fitted and balanced correctly.

John smirked, “It’s a Native American legend; a cannibalistic monster, or evil spirit. They eat human flesh, and are generally associated with winter, and starvation. Some legends say that they were once humans, but their greed turned them into these creatures.”

“Oh that’s horrible!” Mrs Hudson gasped and frowned at John. “Why would you know something like that?”

“They were in a TV show I saw once,” he replied. “Some things just stick with you I guess.”

“Wendy it is then,” Sherlock replied, jumping down lithely to admire his handiwork, standing beside John.

“Beautiful,” John grinned, looking up at it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This, unfortunately, is the end of this story - Think of it like the end, the cliffhanger-like end, to an episode, because we might return to this story in the future and extend it and finish it completely.  
> Right now, however, we were distracted by the real world, other story ideas, and lost motivation for it, so this is the end for now!
> 
> Please leave comments and feedback if you enjoyed it!  
> We both loved writing it when we did and we've enjoyed receiving comments on it recently! It helps, not just for our motivation for this story, but just in general.
> 
> To all of you who have commented and liked and read this, we thank you deeply!

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback fuels us!
> 
>  
> 
> [Harry's Tumblr](http://harrylee94.tumblr.com/)  
> [Gem's Tumblr](http://gem-gem-bites.tumblr.com/)


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